I have complaints about the education our designers get. There are two ways of approaching UX design teaching, and neither of them is satisfactory. One, you come out of a traditional design school, and those are typically art based and concerned about beauty and emotional impact. That’s very important, but they don’t learn the underlying theory and understanding of people’s behavior that’s so necessary. The other school comes from the field of human-computer interaction. Today, it’s mostly computer scientists, and they do understand the fundamental theory, but they’re not very good designers. Most are not capable of making an emotionally pleasing, delightful experience. They can make things that are understandable. What we need to do is combine these new skills, or at least have them work as a team. Designs are not done by single people, they’re done by teams. You need to work with others who bring in different points of view and skills. Watch people do the task you’re trying to support, and support the whole task. If I support the task well, and I don’t do some of the details well, or a bit clumsily, it’s okay. It’s far better to support the task and mess up a little on the details, than it is to get all the details right and not support the task.
“Good” design means it is a) valuable: you’re solving a real problem for people b) easy to use: people find it understandable, accessible and fast c) well-crafted: the entire experience feels designed with thought and care.
If you cannot get a group of people for whom your product is designed for to generally agree that your design is good, it’s not good.
The greatest frustration is feeling like you’re getting too much criticism from too many people (which, according to #2, means your design is not yet good). This is either because a) you’re working under too many constraints b) you’re not exploring solutions broadly enough, or c) the problem is beyond your current skill level.
If you’re working under too many constraints that make it impossible to get to a solution that is obviously good, you need to voice that loud and clear with your team.
Obviousness comes from conforming to people’s existing mental models. Don’t waste time reinventing common UI patterns or paradigms unless they are at least 2x better, or you have some critical brand reason to do so.