To be a great designer, you can't be a purist

You join your first, or 2nd design role. You think you'll get ample time to work on the full process. Rehearsing the double diamond steps with the idea that you'll finally be a designer, finally be working on discover, define, develop, deliver. Research that spans weeks, design iterations where you're going over and over until you get the perfect solution & follow up testing that'll prove you were right in the end.

This idea shattered for me 3 years into my career. I was still holding out hope I could be a design purist until then. But… reality hit me. It will never be like that - nothing will ever be perfect. 3 years in, I realized that's okay.

Being rigid makes it hard to work in design - and brings unnecessary pressure. No product, no company is perfect and working in those constraints makes our job super interesting, but also tough.

What constraints am I talking about? And how can you deal with them?

Time for process

As designers, we should WANT to release often. It's good for software to be releasing things, improving products - and making sure those products are more user centred. Sometimes, we don't have the time to do a diary study that would unlock user insights for your product - or to do that research that we need - which creates uncertainty.

Here's the thing, if we have time constraints, we shouldn't stick rigidly to "no, I NEED 6 weeks for my entire process." It's not realistic. What we can do, is say "okay, I'm going to design for a first iteration, we'll release and get feedback to ensure we're on the right track." This builds trust.

Priorities shift

We've all been there - priorities shift in a business but it feels like the deadline hasn't - and that's okay. As designers, we adapt. Sticking to a rigid process for every priority shift leads to a feeling among our stakeholders, who have their own jobs to worry about, that we aren't willing to work together quickly to create maximum impact.

What can we do differently? We can jump on board - facilitate workshops to understand our knowledge & risk level of the new feature and design the correct parts of the process around the tasks at hand, within a good timeframe.

What am I not saying?

To be clear, I'm not saying the design process needs to go. Double diamond helps to focus on the steps we need to take at the right time. We just need to pick the right parts of the process that fit within our constraints.

Be outcome & impact driven, not a process purist

Pick the right parts of the process for the right moments - good design can also happen because of gut instinct & experience. This doesn't mean research shouldn't be done, it's just about picking the right time for it and getting buy in from your stakeholders.

You can still be strategic, since hopefully you have previous data to hand. You create impact. You build your influence among stakeholders.