Design with Joy
Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and a chance to reconnect with friends and family.
Reflecting on my design journey, a key learning from design school was how to bring joy to our work. Perhaps I’m being too nostalgic. In the Design Loft there was a sense of wonder, of applying creativity to invent a better future, to create freely, to make that breakthrough, to share and learn from each other. My classmates John Edson , David O. , Tony Hu , Chris Cavello , Arne Lang-Ree , Katharine Armstrong , Fred Bould , Bruce Schena , Andy Barkin , christian darby , Andrew Z. , Michael Delaney , Peter Skillman (he/him) ???????? , Peter Macdonald , Hamid Arjomand , Andy Diaz Hope , Tim Sheiner , Russell Sanchez , Lynn Chang , Craig Janik , Louis Hsiao , all inspired me with their infectious energy to design with joy.
Bringing joy to our design work and to our customers has been a key theme for my career.
This recent article in NYT on Freudenfreude reminded me why taking joy in the success of others is so important. The success of our customers in achieving their goals, and bringing joy to a group of people thru your creativity, energy and product making can be the core to your design approach.
Bringing joy to our customer is at the heart of what and why we design.
This quote from Leonard Cohen is a reminder on how as creatives, designers, makers, dreamers, we can shine the light and direct our energy thru the crack to create the better way.
领英推荐
“There is a crack in everything.That's how the light gets in.”
― Leonard Cohen, Selected Poems, 1956-1968
How do you bring joy to your design and product work?
Perhaps Harvinder Bhela put it best (a thoughtful leader that taught me how to scale my leadership), it's like a band making music together.
Create the right environment, have a shared purpose to create something great together, get in the tempo, the cadence, share and build on your work with others, celebrate success together.?
Bringing joy can be infectious, try to make it part of your design agenda.
Head of Design (UX|ID|XD|CX) | Creative Intelligence | Systems Thinker | Design Thinker | Product Innovation & Development
1 年Agreed … shared “freude” and the shared success via co-creating with friends or customers is a powerful emotion … and lasting memory.
Leading the design of something new. Previously Apple Design Studio.
1 年Worth saying again and often, bring joy to your work and your team and any problem can be solved. Sometimes this is the most difficult thing that we do as designers and people but it makes an outsized difference.
Former McKinsey, LUNAR, Stanford ::: Connecting design outcomes to business objectives, beautifully.
1 年Well said, Albert. I think joy and her sister, optimism, are requirements for unleashing creativity.
Founding Advisor
1 年And to paraphrase another part of Harv's sage advice - "make career decisions as much based on the the bandmates you play with, not just the music you get to make"
? Design at Apple
1 年Design Loft looks amazing!!! Thanks for keeping bringing inspirations to the world!