Why being deliberate with your design choices matter.

John Mauriello dropped his latest Design Theory video this morning. I suggest you check it out if you're a creative person (and even if you aren't). After watching it, I had serious pangs of inadequacy regarding the level of detail and depth I go into in these articles compared to his videos. To his credit (and mine?), he does spend hundreds of hours working on each vid. While I only spend hundreds of minutes; which already feels like too much.

Photographer James Popsys discussed recently how he usually refuses to watch other YouTube photographers for fear of being influenced by their work and losing his own unique style. I generally fall into the same philosophy with my design writing, though for different reasons (time, inclination). That said, I'll always carve out time for John's deep-dives. Despite repeatably feeling like I need to step up my game.

Anyway.

We recently put up some branding in the Titan Medical test lab, just to spice it up a bit. When we got the vinyls cut, the sign company maintained the vinyl border around the artwork to keep the applique tape down on the edges during transport. Initially the border went up on the wall with the logo. It didn't look half bad actually, but I said we can (and should) remove the border. Because that was the design intent.

If you do a quick search for design intent, the most prolific definition describes the methodology used for parametric CAD modelling. In simple terms, it's about producing the model features following the same intent as the design. It means that if one feature is intended in the design to be in the middle of another feature, the CAD model also defines this feature relative to the middle.

For designers, this is an extremely myopic view of design intent. Design intent can and should drive everything we do.

Design intent is about designing with purpose. Not purpose in some nebulous hand-wavey way. Quite the opposite actually. It's about defining the purpose of the product as a whole, within its context, and designing each and every element with meaning and reason. And it goes deeper still. It's also about communicating with and connecting to users.

In this article by Phillip Hunter, he describes design as better-making (I'm going to temporarily borrow this term). Rather than simply solution-making (as most designers call ourselves) or pretty-making (as most engineers call us), better-making can have many guises. Better is the design intent that [usually] drives all other design intentions; to make things better than the they were or otherwise would have been.

To define better and figure out how to get there means identifying and understanding the gap/s between the existing and preferred states of the product. Design is the act of iteratively pursuing the answer that will lead us to defining that preferred state. The preferred state, with all it's compromises necessary, forms our design intent.

The design intent of better-making captures a huge amount of what we do as designers to produce beautiful and functional products. It seeks to understand the user needs and context, functional and technical requirements, and limitations. While this overarching design intent becomes the guiding principals for a product that helps define a north star (or southern cross) for the product, it's design intent all the way down.

Design intent will also guide details of the design. It focuses on why the details exist and what form they take. It is not just adding a pop colour just because everyone is adding pop colours. Design intent is the reason why the pop colour is added here or there, and why is it this colour or that. It is everything about the design being purposeful and intentional. All these things add up, and add meaning and value to your product.

Don't do anything without a reason.

This embodiment of the design becomes a collection of cues and visual hints that communicate the design intent to the user. Across space and time, the designer is communicating with the user. Form, proportion, and colour can all communicate what a product does, how it is used, who it is for, and the context in which it belongs. All without a single word being said.

It's the conveying of information between the user and product that, when done right, transcends time and space. When the user is the benefactor of better-making design, the designer must become the benevolent champion of their needs and wants. When this drives design intent, then every detail is executed with that same intention. It's the designer saying to the user "Hey, I knew you were going to do this, here's a feature to help". They tell the user that someone, a real person, cared enough about them to add this detail. To make someone else's life easier. A connection between the designer and user, maybe decades or centuries after the designer is dead and buried.

It should be given the care it deserves.

Conversely, most users don't understand or think about design intent. Such is the designer's anguish. Most users will use the product, good or bad, without thinking about it. They're either too busy, too distracted, or too apathetic. Especially in a world full of useless trash.

Nor should you expect users to care about your design intent. If your product requires users to understand design intent to make it work, they will absolutely get it wrong. This makes it all the more an imperative to be careful with your design and visual communication. Make your design intent clear. Make it so that there is no way to misunderstand the product, no wrong way to use the product, because you've designed all the wrong ways out.

It means taking time and taking care, and being intentional. Being certain your user gets it, even if they don't know it.