Tom Scott’s Post

Design is embedded into everything we do, even if we don’t realize it. The skills and creative problem solving that designers use can be applied to multiple roles and areas. Have any designers on here taken a different or adjacent role to design? Or came from a totally different discipline?

I love these examples and couldn't agree more that design thinking can benefit so many parts of your organization. I'd say this is a big reason for the longevity and success of our partnerships over the years. At Aero Interactive we tend to initially engage with orgs on their product or website design needs, but find ourselves advising on other business needs that come up organically. Understanding that user experience design goes far beyond the confines of a screen is crucial. It's about crafting an exceptional customer journey across every touchpoint. At Aero, we don't just start with the design of a digital product; we strategize around the entire customer experience journey. From the initial interaction with our digital platforms—be it through a landing page, our website, or engaging videos—to nurturing prospects into becoming loyal customers and advocates of our digital products. Our approach is rooted in a deep understanding of target audiences and the transformative paths we envision for them. This holistic strategy ensures that every digital interaction is not only seamless but also deeply resonant with users' needs and expectations. Honestly with this being such a natural part of the job, it's hard to remember every conversation, but here are a few examples of questions that have come up and solutions we've provided as a design partner: ➝ How can we better convey the value of our brand to our target audience and get them to that "aha" moment that makes users come back to our digital product? ➝ How can we take our clients on a cohesive journey with the business not just inside the digital product but across all touchpoints? ➝ What processes does our internal team find themselves repeating that could be designed and automated for efficiency?

🔄 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗥𝗼𝗹𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀 🔄 As product design evolves, our role extends beyond aesthetics; we are crucial mediators between engineering and design. This mediation is essential for creating products that are both visually appealing and technically feasible. 𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝗣𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁𝘀: 1. Bridging Disciplines: We blend creative and technical skills, ensuring design intent aligns with engineering constraints. 2. Effective Communication: Acting as intermediaries, we facilitate collaboration among teams, preventing misunderstandings and driving project success. 3. Risk Mitigation: By identifying potential design flaws early, we help address issues proactively, ensuring smoother development. 4. Fostering Innovation: Our interdisciplinary approach encourages diverse perspectives, leading to user-centric and market-driven solutions. What changes have you noticed in your role as a designer? Let's discuss your experiences! 💬 #ProductDesign #Innovation #DesignThinking #Engineering #Collaboration

I asked 1,300 designers to describe their role. Almost 25% of them identified as a “design team of one”. For much of my career, so did I. I’ve met designers at FAANG and large companies that can’t believe the challenges we work through: - Being a single point of failure on 4+ teams - Managing a weekly calendar like a VP of Product - Building knowledge management, cross-functional relationships, and design ops from 0 to 1 Most designers work through some level of this. But the lift of these challenges is heavier for solo design functions. It's a unique challenge for a specific set of skills. One of those skills? Learning to bring others’ ideas to life. When you're the only designer in the room, it's tempting to focus on your own passionate ideas. But chances are, your PM, engineers, or stakeholders have already done some great work thinking through new ideas that got shelved along the way. As a design team of one, you need to find leverage where you can. This doesn't mean sacrificing your own perspective. It means leveraging the resources and brainpower around you to create something even better. When you bring other people's ideas to life, you: - Build stronger relationships - Demonstrate resourcefulness - Create buy-in and momentum This small mental shift was responsible for almost 7 years of momentum in my 14 year career. How are you leveraging your team’s ideas?

I was promoted to a design leadership position in 2021 and made a loooooad of mistakes, here are some of them and what I’d do differently: Doing a good job as a designer will give you more opportunities and responsibility. It’s tempting to say yes to all those things. One of the many mistakes I made was to spread myself too thin. Another was to sacrifice doing design for managing design. This eroded my ability to do the work which got me into that position. This is what I’d do now if I could do it again: - Be clear about my expectations with myself. Make a pact. - Be clear that my manager knew my intentions and reservations. - Protect my core competency and time to do my job well. - Don’t overcommit my time and energy. - Say no to things, even if it means missing out on cool projects. - No you don’t need to be in that meeting - Ask for help sooner, Ultimately I was scared that admitting I wasn’t enjoying it would mean I was a failure and that I’d be replaced. Who else has had this experience, any thing you would add to this list?

Should Product Designers have a deeper understanding of electronic components? Or it's enough to have only a surface grasp of the idea that "there are some chips inside"? 🤔 My journey as a "smart tech"-focused product designer clearly shows that a firm knowledge of electronic components is the optimal path to a swift development and successful product launch. In the past, I witnessed the challenges and delays that can appear when design concepts are developed without close collaboration with electronics experts. This rookie design mistake may cost a lot and in the worst case, make the whole project unsustainable. To avoid these frustrating outcomes I'm always rooting to collect all the stakeholders' inputs at the start of the design project. This will not only help to design and promptly deliver the product which will make the users happy, but will create a sense of involvement for all the members of the working team right from the start. Collaboration between design and electronics is not just a step in product design, it's a crucial part of creating innovative, user-centric products that succeed 🚀 #productdesign #designthinking #uxdesign #electronicsdesign

🚀 Calling all Industrial Design professionals!👩💻👨🎨 I'm on the lookout for design maturity models that are tailored specifically to industrial design (physical products), and I'd love your insights! Whether you have #IndustrialDesign, #UXDesign, #GraphicDesign, #DesignManagement, #ServiceDesign, or #ProjectManagement experience, your perspective is valuable! ➡️ Have you come across any models, frameworks, or methods that evaluate design maturity in our field? I’m especially interested in anything that helps bridge the gap between concept and execution for physical products. Let’s connect and share knowledge! Drop your thoughts in the comments or feel free to DM me. 📩 #IndustrialDesign #DesignMaturity #DesignStrategy #ProductDevelopment #DesignThinking #DesignManagement

The more companies I speak to, and hear how C-Suites overlook design, I'm starting to understand why they do. The problem some designers have is they cannot articulate what exactly their value is. When challenged to provide strategic guidance, they fall back on the comfortable tactical aspects of design or process vagueness. Most design leaders can hardly justify the existence of a proper design practice beyond the idea that engineering needs design support to build the right products. More and more in 2024, we are seeing design less as a strategic function, and more as "styling". Just a thought, but spending time thinking and writing about how to solve problems will help structure thoughts on how to talk to non-design peers, to continuously get the elusive "buy-in".

This isn't a new problem for #design, and the first step towards solving it is for every designer to read Tom Greever's "Articulating Design Decisions," followed closely by Mike Monteiro's "Design is a Job." The next step is for design leadership in these organizations to start holding their teams accountable for mapping each and every design decision to a customer problem. We can't expect the C-suite to understand how we're impacting the bottom line if we can't even figure it out as individual contributors.

Two typical ways of working involved in industrial design (consultancies). One centres on the human-product relationship. The one focuses on tech- and engineering-end product enablement. The former examines the gap between current designs and user experiences to generate modelled solutions for addressing today needs, and to define and evolve the future human-product relationship. The latter develops technical solutions that facilitate the process of models becoming enhanced product solutions. Equipped with both ways of working, an industrial design team will be enabled to sufficiently understand design challenges and humans, and to bring out meaningful results. But frustratingly, seems to me that many agencies tend to look into the ability of 'producing a product' and reject so-called 'art students' and 'art designers'. #industrialdesign #creativeagency #productdesign #research