Designing for the approval of designers
Unless your target audience is literally designers, you shouldn’t often worry what they have to say about what you’re designing and building.
A lot of the designers who’s work is shared around is often made with other designers in mind. Many of us are trying to impress other designers. Thinking about portfolios, likes, retweets, follower counts. If you’re never truly designing for the target audience, that’s a problem.
Unless your target audience is literally designers, you shouldn’t often worry what they have to say about what you’re designing and building. If you focus on what people may or may not say about what you’re building who are not your target customers you run the (very high) risk of designing something that looks flashy but doesn’t solve a real need, wasting time on the details that don’t actually matter, or making something that looks great but doesn’t look like what the actual customer wanted.
Design is spinach.
I repeat that phrase in my head often. The idea comes from “Fashion Is Spinach,” a book written by Elizabeth Hawes back in the 1930s. “Fashion Is Spinach” takes a brutally honest, no-nonsense approach to the fashion world. Hawes, a fashion designer herself, challenged the status quo, calling out the fashion industry for its constant cycle of trends and the manipulation of consumers’ desires. A common theme in the book is the nameless, faceless “they” who determine what is and isn’t in style.
Ignore what “they” say. Don’t be obedient to trends or the opinions of a select few; instead, focus on what genuinely resonates with your target audience. Real value will always triumph over superficiality and pretense.
Design is not about impressing the design community or catering to their subjective opinions. Your primary concern should be your target customers – the people who will actually use and benefit from your product. Those are the individuals whose opinions truly matter.
Engage with your customers. Conduct user research, gather feedback, and iterate on your design. Focus on their needs, listen to their feedback, and be willing to make bold choices. Be open to making changes, even if it means disregarding the advice of your designer friends. Remember, you’re not in this to win design awards; you’re in this to solve problems and make people’s lives better. Besides, you have to pay to enter for those awards.
What about hiring managers?
Designing your portfolio, résumé, and general professional social presence is as much about designing within constraints for a target audience as any other part of design. There is room to get creative and wild, especially if that’s the type of work you’re looking to attract. But know the difference between the lead generation POV of designing a portfolio and designing for your user.
If you’re thinking of your portfolio while trying to solve real design problems you’re destined to make decisions that are only good for your portfolio, which in the long run is bad for your résumé if you aim to make products that perform well.
So, when is it appropriate to design for designers?
If your users a designers
When you’re designing your portfolio
That’s it. Get out there and make some rad stuff for your customers.