Don't trust the (design) process

Jenny Wen is a brilliant product designer, the kind of person who writes one blog post a year, but every word is worth the wait. I loved this post because it argues that design is not a process, but a goal. Yes, we have best practices, but the best innovation and invention happen when people eschew best practices and listen to their head, heart, and soul. In the same way they say, "you can't buy class," you can't teach taste and intuition. But you can tap into yours — and that is what separates your average product designer from people who change the world with design thinking.

We stopped doing the real thing that would be the most empathetic, useful, and that would actually serve business outcomes best: building stuff that worked well and that people would love.

We became servants to the process, following it step by step every single time, saying stuff like “trust the process.” We made designers feel like their work wasn’t complete if they didn’t start from a perfectly articulated problem statement.

The way I’ve seen great work made isn’t using any sort of design process. It’s skipping steps when we deem them unnecessary. It’s doing them out of order just for the heck of it. It’s backtracking when we’re unsatisfied. It’s changing things after we’ve handed off the design. It’s starting from the solution first. It’s operating on vibes and intuition. It’s making something just for the sake of making people smile. It’s a feeling that we nailed it.

But what if I really want a faster horse?

There are many products I have fallen in love with, only to watch them become a distorted version of what they once were. This happens all the time. Spotify, for instance, has shifted from being a place to listen to music to a platform that pushes podcasts and videos on me because it costs them less for me to listen to a podcast than to a song. But that's not why I joined Spotify in the first place! Rakhim Davletkali articulates this much more eloquently than I do — all I really want is an improved version of Spotify, not a service that is barely recognizable compared to the app I originally signed up for.

People in tech business circles love this quote by Henry Ford:

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.

The idea is to think outside the box and create entirely new markets instead of just new products in existing ones. Like Apple creating the iPhone (sure, smartphones existed before—but cars also existed before the Ford Model T).

But sometimes, I really want a faster horse.

Why I don’t want to grow my freelance design studio into an agency

I empathize greatly with the author Nela Dunato, who, like me, is an indie with a focus on design. When it comes to projects like Plinky or my new AI workshops, my goals are both straightforward and deeply important to me. I'm not looking to build a corporation, instead I'm trying to build a life around my priorities: family, friends, health, helping others, and pursuing a life full of creativity and love. I strive to combine these priorities with how I sustain myself, and if I can accomplish that, I believe I will live a very fulfilling life. Starting a big company is a meaningful challenge for many, and it's not that I don't appreciate the value businesses bring to my life. However, as Nela points out, becoming an entrepreneur, mogul, or boss doesn't have to be the only thing that defines your life.

My former bosses told me I’m “slow” and “inefficient”. I like to call it “thoughtful” and “meticulous”. I don’t like to rush things. I want to make sure all the details are just right. I need to give myself space and time to think. I prefer working with one or two clients instead of multitasking on half a dozen projects.