In advance of another major launch, I wanted to talk a little bit about the role of discernment in our work.
It’s important to negotiate new work from a psychic position of abundance. Even though the work may result in life-altering sums of money, even though the work may be the difference between making a mortgage payment or not, you still must arrive to the discussions of that work as if you can take it or leave it. Prospective clients know otherwise.
Discernment blooms from this position. You’re able to see things as they really are. You’re able to know whether the client is fully present & attentive to the work. You’re able to understand whether the client wishes to co-create that work. And finally, you’re able to understand whether the work is something that will nourish or harm you.
The goal, of course, is to avoid work that is likely to harm you. High-end consultants are on permanent strike from toxic work environments.
When we open new slots, we tend to turn down around 20 clients for every one that we choose to take on. This is discernment in action. After the year we just had, where we got some of the biggest wins of our career, published a new book, and continued our mission of restoring design to its true purpose, we expect nothing less. High-end consulting happens for high-quality clients.
Our redesigned application has a question that is very clear: “Why should we work with you?” Your answer to this tells me everything I need to know about you & how you treat the work. When I sent an early draft of the application to my colleagues for review, someone asked: “Can you really ask that?” And, yes, you totally can. In fact, you can ask anything. And I think right now, that one is pretty important for us to ask.
This week, for paid members
- This week’s paid lesson is about researching filters & sorts. What should you pay attention to on collection pages, and what should you try to fix?
- And our design of the week shows a very… curious nav. What would we point people to instead?
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Links
- Design is a form of leveraged power.
- New design in tech report just dropped.
- The web is slow, which: shocking, yes, but this goes quite deeper than the initial analysis to go into the human reasons behind structural disinvestment in the global south & other places that have slower broadband. This is a major reason why Draft’s site is almost entirely plain text, for the record.
- Pinball interfaces. The number of times I’ve tapped an interface only to watch it shift a split-second before my tap would both melt your brain and not surprise you.
- It’s not just design that’s being structurally devalued: so is front-end work.
- Pay attention to the queer, the punk, the small.