Introduction
Successful designers must develop a versatile approach to tackle various challenges and explore diverse perspectives in the ever-evolving design world. This blog post delves into the importance of going broad and deep in our design thinking, thinking holistically, broadening perspectives, and maintaining an open mind.
Go Broad and Deep
Going broad means being curious about lots of different kinds of things. It means taking on many problems and working across various product categories and industries. Because you might not think that what you learn in one area can be applied elsewhere, but frequently it can. You can find connections between problems that, on the surface, can seem very different because design solutions have broader applications than the specific context in which they might have been created. And valuable insights can come from unlikely sources. So you can find yourself surprised when a previous project for a leisure company inspires the answer to a problem for a financial services company.
Going broad simply means being curious about lots of different kinds of things.
Going deep means immersing yourself in whatever problem you’re facing to allow it to become your world for a while. To carry it around with you, always running in the background. Because that background processing is what enables those kinds of lateral, intuitive leaps that lead to innovation.
Going deep means immersing yourself in whatever problem you’re facing
Think Holistically
When designers go deep, they can develop a holistic sense of the problem and a holistic way of thinking about solutions to the problem. Experiences are complex. A lot is going on in any given human experience.
Designers of human experiences are orchestrating those experiences across many variables. Appealing to users’ senses, rational minds, and irrational feelings. We are doing all this while balancing their tasks, goals, and needs with the capabilities and constraints of the systems we’re building.
Experiences are so complex that they can’t be reduced to a set of definitive choices determined with scientific precision by research. Research can inform our creative choices but can’t dictate them — experience is too messy.
We don’t do research to inform the design, we do it to inform the designer.
The designer must take in the problem from multiple points of view and synthesize a holistic understanding of the problem to create a holistic solution. They think in terms of systems, design, visual, and interface systems, all layered together, working together toward a cohesive goal.
Broaden your Perspectives
Part of thinking systemically is recognizing that we, designers and users alike, are embedded in the larger system called “humanity.” Our work is not done by a lone genius slaving away in the workshop, the way a painter, composer, or mathematician might work. Being human-centered means broadening our perspectives beyond ourselves and our own experiences. It means seeking input from those we know see things differently from us – because that is how we stretch, learn and grow. So we stay connected to the larger world, consistently placing our work in the larger context of what we collectively know about people, technology, and society and how all of these things influence our experiences.
Be Open-Minded
Figuring out “where to go next” requires having an open mind. The philosophy can be described as “Strong opinions weakly held.” It means always having a point of view on the next step to take, but at any point, be ready to drop the best idea and start over — even if starting over means having no idea. Sometimes that means admitting that we didn’t understand the problem as well as we thought. Or to admit that mistakes were made along the way. We need to move beyond our egos, which get in the way of letting go of things that no longer work.
Our willingness to change our minds makes our ideas flexible and adaptable to new and changing contexts. If we don’t take that flexibility as part of our process, we come out with brittle ideas that break down when the context shifts. We can avoid this brittleness by resisting the impulse to subscribe to a single approach for all design problems. To remain flexible, we must collect a toolkit of design practices. There are various methods and the knowledge of when each is best applied. There is no one true way to do this work.
We select the best tools for the job rather than trying to shape each job to the tools that we have. Put down the computer, and pick up a pen. Put down the pen, and start telling a story. Whatever it takes.
Having more than one way to think about a problem gives us more than one way to see possible solutions, expanding our access to the adjacent possible. So like a tree whose branches bend in a strong wind, we can bend instead of breaking, weather the storms of organizational, technological, and economic change.
Conclusion
Becoming a versatile and successful designer involves embracing diversity in design thinking, going broad and deep, thinking holistically, and maintaining an open mind. By doing so, we can expand our access to the adjacent possible and develop flexible, adaptable ideas that weather the storms of organizational, technological, and economic change.