Taking subjectivity out of design
5 years into healthcare, I find more similarities between practicing medicine and design than I thought. The biggest one — both are about diagnosing and treating problems.
When we describe our symptoms to a doctor, they ask questions to diagnose the problem. They often order labs to devise a well-informed treatment plan. Depending on how the patient responds to treatment, they change the course.
That sounds a lot like Design to me. I know, I’m probably oversimplifying how either doctors or designers work. Nevertheless, they are operating on first-principles thinking which is what design thinking is all about.
The subjectivity in design
What I’m trying to get to is slightly different though. Designers often find themselves solving the “symptoms of the problem” rather than the real problem. If you are a designer, I’m sure you have had everyone come and tell you that users are unhappy and we need to add more features.
Not every symptom can be solved with more medicines.
When we were piloting an early product for healthcare users, they kept complaining that the product was too white — What does that even mean?
We had no clue what was wrong. It looked great on our screen. We tested it on every display we could find around the office. So we started tweaking our colors and even changed our font —massive effort for design and engineering. All of that, only to realize that the complaints didn’t improve.
Imagine the doctor treating high fever with ibuprofen while the real problem could be a viral infection.
We’ve all struggled with the subjectivity of design — people make design decisions based on what they feel vs what the facts say. If you are solving the wrong problem, you’ll keep creating fixes that fail.
People make design decisions based on what they feel vs what the facts say.
As Einstein is quoted saying, “If I had only one hour to save the world, I would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem, and only five minutes finding the solution”. The first step to design is understanding the problem.
Taking subjectivity out of design
Focusing on data, facts, and research are the most powerful tools designers have at their disposal.
Data can be quantitative and qualitative
A lot of times, data gets confused with numbers — page views, bounce rates, and average times. While numbers can be valuable to measure the success or failure of a redesign, they are symptoms of an underlying problem.
User demographics, the devices they use, or their working environment are equally important data points to inform the design decisions we make every single day. Conducting moderated user study with only 5 users can provide tremendous insight into the problems.
An inclusive design process
Anyone making a decision in solving your user’s problem is a designer —that includes product managers, engineers, and designers alike. It is important that they are well-informed while making these decisions.
At Innovaccer, we conduct various sessions with our users — problem discovery, feedback deep-dives, and usability testing. These sessions often include UX researchers, designers, product managers, and developers. Listening to users talk about their struggles can be very powerful in bringing empathy for their problems across the team.
Pandemic has changed the way these sessions work — for the better in many ways. Since they happen remotely on Zoom, all stakeholders can join and listen in.
But I’m a designer, not a numbers person
We are building more and more products that impact billions of people across the globe. A wrong decision can destroy relationships, put you in a car with a criminal, or take someone’s life because the nurse wasn’t notified at the right time. You get the point.
We must use all the ammo available to us while designing products. Design Leaders have the most important job to empower designers by providing them with the right training, access to data, and keeping the design process inclusive.
This article first appeared in the May 2021 issue of Weave, the design and technology magazine published by Avantika University.
