Law 8: Encourage Design Intrigue to enter your design space

48LawsOfDesignPowerProduct Design
Written By Joshua Nard

Image Description: (Generative AI) Designers collaborating around a table with others on ideas.

Design Law 8: Encourage Design Intrigue As An Invite To Your Design Space

Stimulate stakeholder intrigue with fostered participation in design sessions and workshops. As a seasoned fly-fisherman fisherman, I learned a well-placed bait lures fish. Place thoughtfully presented design challenges and opportunities to captivate the imagination of your broader team members, enticing them to eagerly participate in the creative journey. Cultivate a design environment within your organization that invites others to actively engage in the collaborative process. By employing captivating concepts with enticing possibilities, it will spark curiosity among stakeholders and ignite their enthusiasm within your space. 

Expanding:

When today’s teams have tools as basic as Microsoft Paint, design can certainly appear to come easily. As leaders, we are often proponents of asking people to explore their creativity. It is still also important to distinguish creativity from design rigor. As much as wish to remove friction in design, the consequence in our team's value is a misunderstood perception that design is easy. As I developed the United Airlines Operations Product design team, I started with one designer. In the beginning, project managers were coming to me with mockups in MS paint. "Put the button here, style this table there." I embraced this without resistance as I was quickly learning the complex logistics in a heavily matrixed organization. It was important that I deferred some specifics of what to build with a limited team and budget. The visual design was nowhere near the immediate need.  Since we need to create space where members come to you, I began introducing weekly agile design reviews on Tuesday and Thursdays with teams. 

Begin introducing questions that challenge stakeholders to have workshops or design sessions. Show the approach and value of your design space and team.  If you have other stakeholders claiming they have a better solution, invite them to an upcoming meeting. They may attend thinking how easy design work is. What you will show is all of the considerations your team evaluates. Do they want a new and different button style for a specific pattern? Celebrate it and ask them how they are going to scale it, train the user or justify the costs of untested engagement.

This is law #8.

CONTEXT: During my summer reading, I gave myself a challenge while reading Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power. Since the author has suggested we take them as “defensive” and not too literally, could we take inspiration as laws for creatives to convey the value of design among stakeholders?  How would you reframe and expand on this law? Follow for more and comment below.

#productdesign #productleadership #designleadership #48lawsofdesignspower #RobertGreene #48lawsofpower

Robert Greene’s book:

https://www.amazon.com/48-Laws-Power-Robert-Greene-ebook/dp/B0024CEZR6/

 
Joshua Nard
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