The four words I hate as a product designer.
This lights my FUSE.
The four words I hate as a product designer;
“Design whatever you want.”
By default, this happens every time a brief is half-baked, which is all too often in my experience – where the customers’ needs are vague and the project parameters are unclear.
As a designer, it’s a scenario I hate. I instinctively feel uneasy, untethered, and exposed.
It’s high risk. Like walking a high slack line without protection.
Okay buck up creative, you say, this is your moment to shine. Go crazy. Get creative!
Nope, it doesn’t work that way.
Because designers, like engineers, are trained to seek out problems. Great problems have tight restraints. And yield better results.
The opposite is true with wide-open requests. In the best case, it yields a middle-of-the-road solution—or worse, a wildly wrong guess.
Don’t believe me?
Try it with AI.
LLMs also provide the best results when narrowed by context and tight constraints.
Prompt Chat-GPT with a wide-open prompt. What do you get?
GENERIC prompt 1: “Generate some slogans for a running trail shoe.”
Answer: “Conquer Every Trail, One Step at a Time.”
That’s lame! Because AI lacks expertise in any domain, AI simply guesses to please you. Since it’s a guess, its solution is safe, generic, and flat.
Now let’s tighten it up by adding a distinct persona, a mindset, and niche down the product expectations.
TIGHTER prompt 2: “Act as an irreverent comedian and write a slogan for my race day running trail shoe. The customer has a competitive mindset. It is important that their shoe lasts for many races and is easily upcycled.”
Answer: “They’re Recyclable – Unlike Your Excuses.”
Not bad! That’s pretty good even for AI. With tighter guidance, the LLMs’ output better matches our expectations and needs.
It’s the same with product creation. When we care enough to dig deeper to find a great problem, for a specific user, we enable great problem-solving.
Use these words instead:
“Hey designer, I’ve got a better problem for you.”
Ah, now that fires me up! 🔥