Good product designers / bad product designers
Published in
4 min readJul 13, 2021
I find that too many companies, and even many designers, have no clue what a good product designer actually looks like. Yet there is a huge difference between how great product designers operate, and the rest.
- Good designers strive to know their users and their problems intimately. They go out and regularly talk to users. Bad designers think they already know what’s best.
- Good designers know that doing research right is a real skill. They know how to get to the real problem when a customer requests a feature. Bad designers just ask the user “what they think of the design”.
- Good designers make decisions based on a strong rationale. They have laid out the goal and constraints, and can always explain why they picked a solution over another.
- Good designers know that the best solution comes from trying a lot. They remix, test, iterate, and try different things. They push until they have explored the problem and solution spaces entirely. Bad designers stop at their first idea and show solutions that are not thought through.
- Good designers understand that design is a collaborative activity. They seek feedback early, and from as many people as needed. They listen to others’ ideas. Bad designers are afraid and keep their designs to themselves until the last minute. Bad designers feel threatened when other team members suggest ideas.
- Good designers know how to manage stakeholders. They present their design themselves. They frame the discussion around goals, not features. They are confident in the design, but are actively looking for objections and are OK with being wrong. They help their client understand what is good feedback and what is not. Bad designers complain that stakeholders “don’t get design”. Bad designers ask the client to make decisions for them and let the discussion be a design-by-committee festival.
- Good designers think in layers, and understand that these layers influence each other. They think about the user and business goals, content, information architecture, copy, interactions, visuals. Bad designers only think about what they see, and compromise function for aesthetics.
- Nevertheless, good designers also design beautiful UI. They respect and understand the fundamental elements of visual design such as typography, spacing, alignment, colors, and balance.
- Good designers design the full experience, including and especially what happens out of the happy path. They think about interactions, states, and transitions, and use real data. Bad designers design static screens instead of systems.
- Good designers make sure that their interfaces are understood. They know how to prototype quickly, and how to conduct tests. Good designers take the blame for usability problems.
- Good designers take ownership of what is actually shipped. They coordinate with the engineers and make sure to help them deliver at the expected quality. If needed, they compromise on their design together. They understand that specs are just artifacts and not the end goal. Bad designers don’t pay attention to the steps “after” theirs. They build beautiful mockups that never actually get shipped and blame the context.
- Good designers define and measure the impact of their work. They make sure that the product produces the expected outcome by following up on the performance after the team has shipped.
- Good designers have a deep knowledge of theory, frameworks, and tools, and apply them with rigor. But good designers stay away from dogma because they understand the core principles of the practice. Bad designers want to follow this one process no matter what.
- Good designers make sure to spend their time on the highest-leverage topics. Bad designers waste their time optimizing for irrelevant details.
- Good designers improve their environment over time. They build systems that help them and the team. They take the time to identify and implement improvements in the way they work. They consume and produce content about their craft. Bad designers create a mess when they work. Bad designers continue to work with the same obstacles month after month.
More about this
I originally wrote this as an exercise to help me and my team clarify our expectations of the designer role. It’s based on two famous essays:
I decided to re-write it and share it because I believe our industry needs more examples of what a great product designer (and product team) does differently.
I wrote the article with product leaders as well as designers themselves in mind, because I believe that too many of us don’t understand what is expected to do the job properly.
As to why product and design are so broadly misunderstood, I found the following pieces of conversation particularly insightful:
