Why people misunderstand design, getting the easy things wrong, writing in public

The last time I chatted with Kurt, he remarked out loud ahead of time that store design is one of the most widely misunderstood profitable practices in ecommerce. And as I’ve written Store Design our the past year, I’ve wondered: why is design so hard to understand?

• Design has an eternal identity problem. We don’t know what to call ourselves, and so people don’t know how to understand us. Many people don’t even know what we do.
• Because design is the strongest form of leveraged power in an organization, designers have become structurally disempowered by business strategists, executives, and other workers.
• We don’t have peers who practice design – at least not as we recognize it. As a result, we don’t know what “good” design looks like, and we lean into “bad” design patterns. (90% of our teardown work exists to identify obvious errors that store owners lack the peer group to isolate themselves.)
• Because online stores incorrectly believe that they are not existing within technology, they don’t know how to hire for design or development roles, and so don’t know how to be discerning with respect to quality talent in these areas. As a result, quality talent often leaves for other industries.

Value-based designers struggle to prove themselves in the best of times, and right now is not the best of times. That’s why our case studies have such outsize value – and why we keep generating them as we get more wins.

If you run a store or know someone who does, and you want to benefit from the outsize economic impact that design is capable of, one consulting slot is available. Reach out and let’s get started.

This week, for paid members

• Our fortnightly teardown is for carry brand Alpine Sea, a classic case of getting the hard stuff right and the easy stuff wrong.
• Our design of the week presents to you some links that are not clickable, do not go anywhere, and are not in fact links. Did you make the same mistake? Don’t do it on your store.
• Our paid weekly lesson, about why stores are continuing to get key details of usability & communication fundamentally wrong after several years, speaks to the deep structural failings of contemporary ecommerce, along with the psychospiritual impoverishment facing the tech industry. We’re fun at parties!
• And our monthly office hours are a week from today, on Tuesday August 21 at 1p CDT. Come through!

Want in? Join us now – named one of the best ecommerce communities going on the web.

Links

• Some verbiage for more accessible design, alongside examples. Enjoyable read.
• When reading this correct post on how to avoid low-quality design patterns that harm usability, I fondly recalled how, at my penultimate W-2 gig, I was handed business cards that had “Fun Ruiner” listed as the job title. My fury at this powers me to this day. You cannot kill me in a way that matters. Thank you.
• Julia Evans on writing in public. Essential read on the value of writing in public, of thinking in public. If you’re reading this, you are probably in some sort of knowledge work profession, which means, given infinite time, you will have to write. To an audience. Of people.
• A nice NN/g video on compositional balance.
• How much does a senior user experience designer make in 2023? Submitted without comment with respect to Draft’s value-based work.