How does someone feel when they are using your product— not just during, but before and after.
Like storytelling, every design project has one or more protagonists, a setting, a plot, a conflict and a resolution.
Most design leaders, like John Maeda in his Design in Tech Report, argue that designers need to code in order to survive. But if you’re a young or aspiring designer, I’m here to tell you, to beg you, to ignore these people. Design is about people, not technology. In order to design great products, you need to understand not just what you’re making, but why you’re making it. You do that by empathizing with your customers to feel their pain, and designers are effective only after doing so.
Whether it’s in the form of personas, storyboards, journey maps or even a plain old written narrative, great designers start with clear, compelling narratives about the context of the customer’s problem they’re solving for.
What companies need now and in the near future are designers that are writers and storytellers. Good writing skills enable designers to tell a strong narrative of the customer in a holistic, memorable way. The result is thoughtful design; creating products that people love and can’t live without.
The parallels between writing and designing are strongest when it comes to building context. Both require sensitivity to every plausible situation. Like writing, the design process considers varying levels of complexity in the context of use: