4 questions I ask myself when designing

...to arrive somewhere more interesting 🪄

Hi 👋

I’ve been travelling this week so I’ve put together something slightly different for you. I thought it would be interesting to call out four questions I consistently find myself asking during the design process.

It’s not an exhaustive list and depending on what, where and how you design there will be many others that will be equally or more important¹. But these four reliably help me arrive at solutions that are more relevant, powerful and just plain interesting. Maybe they’ll help you too!

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1. Are we answering the right question?

Are you asking the most important question in the best possible way?

A good designer always questions the brief. Even if we’re provided with something that seems, at first glance, to be watertight. There’s nothing worse than pouring time and effort into a solution for a problem that doesn’t really matter, and so asking this question at the start of a project helps avoid that fate. Firstly by ensuring you spend some time talking to people, understanding what matters to them and the problems they really care about and secondly by ensuring that the way you’re framing the problem you pick in the best possible way.

How you frame a problem or a situation determines the kind of solutions you and your team will come up with, so there’s an art to trying out different variations of problem statements for size and seeing where they take you. Too narrow and the solution is drearily pre-ordained but too broad and there’ll nothing concrete enough for you to latch on to and make your design feel special. So try a few out.

❓ In Design Lobster #146 we dived deep into “frame-storming”

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2. What’s the simplest version of this?

Le Taureau - a series of lithograph prints of a bull made by Pablo Picasso in 1945-46.

I think that one of the best habits you can get into as a designer is eliminating at least three-quarters of what you started with. In a world that always seems to be asking us to do and be more, the direction of travel for the best design is always in the opposite direction. As I wrote last year, the essence of design is restraint, and there’s no better way of ensuring this than by challenging yourself to imagine the simplest version of a given solution. In speech we’re sometimes afraid of saying the obvious thing or (horror) being clichéd—but in design this is more often a virtue than a faux-pas.

“When you're forced to be simple, you're forced to face the real problem. When you can't deliver ornament, you have to deliver substance.”

—Paul Graham

Being simple requires you to know the source material through and through, to know what matters and what doesn’t. So this question is a useful sense check for whether you’re ready to truly start designing. If you don’t know what’s essential yet, you might need to have a few more conversations first. As the saying goes, we should seek simplicity on the far side of complexity. We’re not seeking the kind of simplicity that does not come from not knowing a subject well enough, but from knowing it so well we can distill it down to the one or two things that matter most.

🧘 In Design Lobster #75 we pursued simplicity

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3. What’s the most magical version of this?

Truly nothing is more magical than something being done for you without you even having to ask.

Simplicity should always come first, but after that I think designers should always be seeking to deliver solutions that feel magical. To put something in front of people that they simply couldn’t have imagined, can perhaps scarcely believe is real. Magic in design can come in many forms, from flourishes that heighten the emotional peak of a product, delightful interactions that make use of all of our senses to the sheer craft of making something lovely. I firmly believe that if you pour enough love into something it starts to feel magical to people even if they can’t fully put their finger on why.

Honestly one of the best and simplest examples of magical design I can give you is the way Apple autofills verification codes. It’s magical not because is fancy but because it relieves you of a task no sooner than it appears. Magic + Simple = Great Design.

Asking yourself what the most magical version of a solution is can be another sense check too, because you really need to know where somebody’s head is at at every step to create something magical. Magic is deeply contextual, so what’s wonderful in one context is can be pretty annoying in another. Handle that wand with care.

💎 I have strong feelings about making nice things

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4. What would get somebody to talk about this?

Sheep-shock. A flock of François -Xavier Lalanne sheep in a Paris apartment in the 1970s.

Maybe some of you might find this last question a little controversial. The uneasy hinterland between the provinces of design and marketing can strike fear into the heart of even seasoned designers but I personally believe it can be powerful to explore what is (or could be) conversation-worthy in a possible design solution.

Especially when it comes to digital products being conversation-worthy or not can be life or death. There is a whole science to making digital design easier or more natural to share but this way of thinking extends far beyond referral codes. The truth is that people talk about what they didn’t expect and this creates all sorts of interesting opportunities for designers that I don’t think we pursue well enough.

“To sell something familiar, make it surprising. To sell something surprising, make it familiar.”

—Raymond Loewy

From Apple’s emergency features to my own company’s Monzo’s brightly coloured cards, there are design choices that can be made that somehow demand attention or curiosity. Exploring what these could be in your design might be the difference between breaking out and sinking without a trace.

🐑 We designed to surprise in Design Lobster #132

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Hope you enjoyed this special edition. I’d love to hear other questions you find the most valuable in your design process!

Have a great week,

Ben 🦞

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1. Pro tip: listing out all of your questions at the beginning of a project is a great habit to get into if you’re not doing it already. Even and especially the stupid ones because they often yield the most interesting avenues for future work.