A product designer’s job is not to design
Over the years, I’ve learned that a product designer’s job is not, in fact, to design. It’s to deliver value efficiently to the customer and company.
“When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”
We designers tend to want to solve problems with Figma, Miro, and other design tools. We sometimes assume our job is to:
- Receive design tasks
- Create stuff in a design tool
- Pass designs off to the next part of the process
Now, don’t get me wrong—this is valuable—and a large part of our job. At the same time, there are other ways for designers to deliver value. And if we take a broader view of our responsibility, we can usually serve the customer and the company more effectively.
A broader viewpoint
Sometimes it’s actually better if we skip all the pixels and vectors and prototypes. Is there an improvement to the customer experience that can easily be “designed” with a conversation or a written document? In many cases that will deliver value much more quickly than trying solve the same problem with artifacts from a design tool.
And sometimes the most effective way for us to deliver value takes place after we’re done with our design tools. The truth is, when engineering is building a design it’s likely closer to delivering value to the customer. So things like engineering support, design QA, and user testing can be more valuable than producing new designs. But if we view our job as producing designs, we may prioritize making new designs over things like answering questions from engineering.
Another critical way that designers deliver value is around innovation. Despite what some may think, designers aren’t inherently more innovative than others. But we are very good at helping others express their ideas, especially through workshops and ideation sessions. These can help unearth truly innovative ideas from both inside and outside the company. And of course we can make these ideas tangible and testable with mockups and prototypes.
Designers are more than their tools
There are so many ways designers can bring value without using design tools. And again—this isn’t to say our skills with design tools aren’t valuable. They are. But we are so much more than that.