Design Mindset??

The design career is roaring at a scale; with each passing day, more and more business organisations are realising the significance of design.

Numerous frameworks, processes, templates and tools are circulating more than ever, producing a positive perception of design. There are nearly no threshold boundaries or criteria for starting a design career, making it hard to position ourselves in an ever-evolving space.

Flipside, Many aspire to enter the industry through institutions, designer cohorts and even self-taught, wanting to blossom and make an impact. However, there is no guarantee of success, even how proficient you use those tools & systems.

There is a bigger picture that is dimming our perspective! Design is not a process; It’s a mindset.

? Establishing design as a?mindset.

Sytems, trends and frameworks come and go anyway, but core values at a philosophical level will never change. Research shows that mindsets play a significant role in determining outcomes. As a designer, understanding, adapting and shifting our mindset oblige overpowering challenges to building an everlasting career.

Our mindset is a set of beliefs that shape how we make sense of the world and ourselves. It influences how you think, feel, and behave in any given situation. — Carol Dweck

I have been thinking about what should be our established set values or philosophy that we should embed to make us stand out from the rest!

Each point mentioned below should be a respective essay, so let’s hold everything to the introductory level and try to get a peek. In the future, I want to explore and write about each topic on top of this. Let’s deep dive.

? Curiosity

Curiosity is mighty. It motivates us to take the initiative to wander around uncertainty and complexity. Even I believe being curious helps you lead ahead about why things are the way they are, why things don’t work, or why people behave the way they do.

Many of us will state that empathy is the first step in the design approach. While empathy is essential to understanding others, curiosity is paramount to empathy for the people and systems in place, enabling us to connect with individuals, strengthen relationships, and notice problems from unique perspectives.

German psychologist Hans-Georg Voss succinctly describes curiosity as “motivation to explore.”

Psychologists agree that curiosity is an inherent human emotion. Understanding how the emotion of curiosity comes to be is an essential foundation for designing experiences of curiosity.

? Courage

Are you comfortable expressing an unpopular opinion? Were you ever in a situation with your manager or stakeholder where you believed something was inappropriate but feared arguing and stayed calm? Maybe there is a need to cultivate the moral courage to stand straight and say what you think.

Courage is choosing and manifesting life over fears. — Brené Brown

Have the moral courage to advocate for people. We need the courage to repeatedly push ourselves through challenges, fears, anxieties, insecurities, self-doubts, uncertainties, rejection, and criticisms. When we choose to be courageous and stay in the uncertain zones of possibilities, challenges become opportunities for growth, healing, and accomplishments.

? Collaborative

Design is inherently collaborative work. Great products don’t happen by accident. Accept it. The best outcomes result from splendid teams operating together towards a shared objective — an orchestration of procedures, systems and people.

Even today, I will encounter designers reluctant to collaborate well with cross-functional people. Face disagreements to establish a feedback loop, negotiate and influence the ideas and strategies.

The designer role is no longer silo work operating in a bubble on your own or as part of an insular team or department. Good designers are great at the craft. Great designers will dominate the craft and have built great relationships with their squads.

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” — Helen Keller.

When Steve Jobs wanted to see an early version of the iPhone, he locked a bunch of elite employees into a room and told them to get to work. The rest is history.

? Communication

These days, whenever I scan job descriptions, I read a statement, ‘ We need people who can communicate well!’ ‘Articulate complex problems into simple solutions’ ‘Story tellers’.

“A designer without communication skills is just a pixel pusher.” — Benek Lisefski.

On an average workday for a designer, most of our time spend discussing requirements, conducting design reviews with engineering, managing feedback from stakeholders and users and exchanging information through the various teams, and converting concepts into functional solutions. We do a lot more than pixel pushing.

Good design comes from good communication; a good communicator eventually becomes a good designer. Being a strong communicator is directly correlated to doing impactful work.

? Drop Your?Ego

Ego will make us isolated. You might have an excellent track record of working with prestigious firms and creating impactful products; Ego can disrupt career growth.

Being creative and curious minds, occasionally, ego can help us overcome impostor syndrome and self-doubt. But unless it’s correlated with a healthy amount of self-awareness, ego can make us think we’re more skilled than we are.

Having an ego can make us forget that people are what make design, design. — Tiffany Eaton

Our objective is not to succeed for ourselves; always remember we are collectively functioning for a purpose. Period.

? Quick?overview

? Design is not a process; It’s a mindset.

? Curiosity is mighty. It motivates us to take the initiative to wander around uncertainty and complexity.

? Have the moral courage to advocate for people. We need the courage to push ourselves through challenges repeatedly.

? Design is inherently collaborative work. Great products don’t happen by accident. Accept it.

? Good design comes from good communication; a good communicator eventually becomes a good designer.

? Our objective is not to succeed for ourselves; always remember we are collectively functioning for a purpose. Period.

This article was originally published at kiranjuvvalapalli.com

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