Make things that matter

As designers, we often find ourselves in between problems that need to be solved and immovable business constraints. I've spent a lot of my working life in companies and organizations that are driven by a particular mission and I've noticed a pattern of tension between making something that is good and making the thing that is seen as the best thing for the business.

This is especially true in mission-driven for-profit businesses, or companies that may not consider themselves to be mission-driven but would like to do the right thing. The work is guided by making a difference and at the end of the day there are still revenue targets.

Don't make people use something bad

Design plays a critical role in this space because designers understand how to make things that work for humans, which squishes us in right next to the mission (assuming your mission involves humans in some way). In order to design technology well, we have to think about how people are going to use the thing we're making. So if we decide what to build based mostly on what will be profitable—which, let's face it, is often the requirement—someone needs to own accountability to the mission. What we build has to be good for the people who will use it.

There is often a contradiction between what the business wants and what people you're making something for need. Many times we're asked (or we might decide) to lean toward the business need, and that might be the right choice. That's fine, it happens to all of us—but don't stop there! Don't make a shitty thing if you can help it. Don't make people use something bad, just don't do it. Put a little more effort into making it at least 5% better. We are responsible for not putting bad design out into the world. It is our job to give people something that is truly better than whatever they had or didn't have before. And every time we push a little more, we're adding to the total sum of better.

Divergent rebellion, convergent rationality

There is a lot of technology in this world and more and more each day, at a remarkably fast pace. Everything we make should be tipping the scale away from bad toward good. You might be thinking, "Sure, but shouldn't everyone be responsible for this? Why call out designers?" Because design is inherently rebellious. Good design happens when we question everything and challenge ideas that others have accepted as the way it has to be. The power of design lies in divergent thinking¹—the ability to look past the status quo and imagine what might be possible.

But convergence is also important. Organizing scattered ideas into a clear plan is how things actually get done. There is something that happens when you break down a project into tiny pieces. You might call these requirements, or metrics, or something else. The tiny pieces might be part of just one little truncated section of a user journey, or it might be a list of technical details that must be referenced. These pieces are important and the people who are good at organizing them are wonderful people to have around.²

The amorphous goo of meaning

But before these pieces exist, there is a big, sometimes amorphous blob of a problem that might have some better-defined pieces sticking out of vast areas of unidentifiable goo that changes shape depending on which way you look at it.

If you're like me, you have a deep affinity for that goo. There is something special about it that starts out as a powerful guiding force and then with the definition of each piece, gets somehow harder to see clearly. It's the life force behind the project. It's a shifting combination of the actual problem you're solving and the solution that is not just meeting the requirements, but also making the world a little better.

As you break down a problem, it's easy to focus on the pieces you've defined and not the goo that should be holding them together. But the mission is somewhere in that goo! And in order to make something even just 5% better, to make something that really is adding to the sum of better, we can't lose sight of it.

Designers can keep the goo from disappearing by bringing attention back to the whole experience, again and again. Constantly reminding us of the perspectives of people who are going to use what you're making. This helps connect the pieces together to make sure the mission—the meaning—isn't just an afterthought.

Doing the right thing is hard, do it anyway

But! That tension between doing the right thing and doing what's good for the business can be a trap. Business constraints are not the enemy of good design, and if we think about it that way we're cutting off the potential power of design. Instead, a riskier challenge with a potentially higher reward is to position the mission alongside the value of the business. But like, really actually do that, not just say it emphatically.

Rather than asking the question, "should we do the right thing for the people who use our product, or should we do the thing that might bring us closer to revenue targets?" why not ask "How can doing the right thing bring us closer to our revenue targets?" We are allowed to flip the script and instead of applying business constraints on design, apply design constraints on the business. The radical divergence that design can bring to building things is also at home in strategy and purpose.

Walking the line of mission and profit is a wobbly path, but not losing sight of the difference we're trying to make in the world is one way to steady ourselves.

Notes:

1. A lot has been written about the importance of balancing divergent and convergent thinking. Here's one explanation.
2. Shout out to you, PMs.