Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Joe Pascavage

Don’t hate—designers just think differently than you.

Yeah. We’re pretty much a mixed basket.

You never know what you’re going to get with any given clique of design gurus you come across. Sure everyone has their own unique interests and hobbies, but I’m pretty confident when I say designers are potentially the strangest collection of people I’ve ever interacted with—and I personally love it.

Maybe we’re just born to be different, and that’s then amplified by any given means of formal or informal training. We see the world in a different light, and we sweat the details that others find insignificant. We’re potentially seen as the annoying or immature ones in an office setting for any given reason such as A) We dress more relaxed because it’s important to ensure the incredible brainpower that goes into creativity isn’t sacrificed by wearing pleated khakis (or maybe we just have better taste), and B) we laugh a bit too frequently with each other to keep our kindred spirits uplifted rather than sitting in dead silence while typing monotonous emails all day. Pick your poison, as a designer, I’ve pretty much experienced any sort of scrutiny such as what was just mentioned.

Silliness aside, there is a seriousness to the work as well. We’re tasked with some pretty heavy stuff. We carry a fair amount of weight when it comes to protecting things like:

Your brand image (how does the world perceive you, and what opinions are they forming to love or hate you)
The user experience (did that just make sense, or did we scare you off because we confused you)
Developing a new product or invention (does someone even want to use this thing in the first place?)

“Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.” ~Steve Jobs

In organizations today, especially product driven ones, employees are beginning to mutter among themselves, “outcomes over output”. I love hearing this as it’s helping others, especially designers, shift from operating less efficiently. There’s this deranged cycle of project work you’re likely to have either experienced already or unfortunately will at some point in your career; where you feel like you’re doing nothing more than punching a ticket in some sort of project tracking software. You find yourself slopping together half-baked ideas to fulfill the simple need of consuming as many glossed over eyeballs as possible. This churn and burn does work to a degree, but I feel has a short shelf life for your service, and ultimately your talent. It’s narrow-minded and pushes potential innovation away.

Having taken part in scenarios like this though are all part of the process when growing in your design career, I get that. Chances are you’re going to experience this more than you’d prefer and I’m certainly not judging as I’ve lived through it myself. I do feel though as our field of work grows in popularity, we’re inevitably bloating our industry with a lot of fugly design.

At the core of it, no matter how incredible or awful you may be at your craft, we all want the same things as designers. We want to create something great. Something that will move another human being to laugh, cry, or smile. We strive to make beautiful and simple things to help one another that will inspire others to feel and do the same. Although, on the flip side of all this greatness we also put an emphasis on competition with one another. No matter how intentional it may or may not be, you have to admit we do enjoy it a little bit.

We attempt to learn from our successes and failures — but by nature, we also mimic one another as we push that one idea to be improved over what someone else had done. Hopefully, it’s approached as healthy competition even if it is simply for a little bit of recognition now and again. Although you’ll ultimately start to hear the word “ego” get tossed around throughout examples like this once emotions come into play. When others witness designers duking it out they can view it as either motivational or potentially a waste of time. If you’re thinking the latter it’s important to remember that design is like a science. Any means of trial and error is a fundamental method of problem-solving throughout the design process.

When it comes to “ego” I believe that this is potentially the ultimate problem we all continuously strive to get passed and overcome as designers. That person you see in the mirror is the toughest critic you’re ever going to have no matter how toe-to-toe you may come with another. When this happens to me and I feel the wheels spinning, I have this little motto I like to remember from the fictional mad man himself, Don Draper:

“Make it simple, but significant.”

In some ways, in living a lifestyle of design, I believe we are always striving to undo this facade of the grown-up world. Maybe that’s why there’s a part of us that portrays oneself to act more childlike than non-design types. Or perhaps we realize the potential of our surroundings a little easier by this way of design thinking, and that living a life with a more wild heart… the outcome can be a happier one. ☺️

I hope you enjoyed this read and that it helps you relate as you may seek value in your own moments of “weirdness”. Please feel free to place any comments below or just shoot me a message directly as I’d love to chat more about your own lessons learned! 👍🏼

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We’re all a little weird. was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We’re all a little weird.

Cool stuff, every week

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