Leveraged power, review design, fuller stack
Because design is a form of leveraged power, our highest priority should be to understand the existing structures of power, and then to claim that power for ourselves. This is, in 2024, the only way we will practice & ship impactful design.
In practice, this takes a few steps:
- Understand power. In what specific ways is power already leveraged in the organization? Who makes decisions? Whose decisions ship in practice?
- Understand incentives. What are the built-in incentives of those in power? What drives them in their careers? “More money” and “more prestige” are two big ones. In what ways do they get recognition, promotion, and progress?
- Get small wins. You begin creating the ability to leverage power by clearly showing the economic benefits of design. You cannot do that by redesigning the product wholesale. You need small, easy wins that ship to real customers.
- Make the case. Point to the wins in front of those with power and provide a strategic path forward. Then, own that path and start practicing design.
Remember that as a designer, you rarely possess power right away. Your goal is to convince those in power to embrace design, so you can gain power & leverage it. Or, find an organization that already respects design, and work there.
This week, for paid members
- This week’s paid lesson is about review design on product detail pages. What’s the baseline now?
- Our design of the week shows a very curious secondary call-to-action. In what ways could it be messaged more helpfully?
- Our fortnightly teardown is for completely normal boutique Stand Up Comedy. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll find god.
- And finally, our monthly office hours are today, April 16, at 1p CDT. If you join us now, you’ll be able to participate!
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Links
- Design is a form of leveraged power.
- Design is a form of leveraged power.
- Machine learning is accelerating technological collapse, film at 11.
- An interesting way to combine design & development. Part of me thinks that the better way forward is for designers to simply code.
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