It's not my design, it's our design. Yes, I may be ultimately responsible for it, but the team is hopefully involved in hearing and understanding customers' problems, so the team is involved in designing the solution too.
We are not our customers. In order to build a solution that is valuable for customers, usable by customers, feasible to build, and viable source of revenue, we need to talk to customers. Build the solution with your customers, not just for them.
Take the time to truly understand your customers' problems. If you don't, you won't build a solution that works for them. It could be beautiful and usable, but has to solve a customer problem.
The design system is the source of truth. Don't like what's in the design system? Collaborate to incorporate your ideas. No design system? Create and communicate some shared styles and principles. Typography, colors, form fields, and buttons are good place to start.
Value your customers' time and brain calories more than you value your time-in-app or daily active users metrics. With so many things competing for our attention these days, help your customer get what they need and get on with their life.
I'm a big fan of the Golden Rule, "treat others as you would want to be treated." We're not designing for ourselves, but we can still stop to think, "is this how I would want to be treated?"
My interest in design started back in the late 90s when a buddy and I created our high school's first website during our study hall. We taught ourselves HTML and built an ugly, but usable website. I was also an intern at Caterpillar at the time and had the opportunity to help create an early intranet site for the parts distribution division.
Unfortunately, web design majors didn't exist at any local university, so I started college as a computer science major with a minor in art. After taking a C++ class and a data structures class, it quickly became apparent this was not what I was interested in. I ended up graduating from Monmouth College with a bachelor of arts in business administration. While not a degree in design, looking back I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to increase my business acumen.
After college, my wife and I got married, had a few kids, and both started working for Caterpillar in Peoria, IL. I spent several years just coasting through my career. I didn't hate what I was working on and enjoyed the people I had the opportunity to work with, but I had a feeling of restlessness that I wasn't doing what I was called to do. After going through Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University in 2010 to get a handle on our finances, I decided to start making a career change.
I would spend the next 18-24 months learning and practicing web design and user experience design before work, over lunch, and after work. Treehouse, Smashing Magazine, and A List Apart were a huge help. After designing and building a few websites for friends and family, we felt called to move to Franklin, TN to work for Ramsey Solutions.
I spent a little over 8 years at Ramsey Solutions building life changing products with a fantastic team of people I adored. I'm incredibly grateful for the risk they took on an unproven, self-taught designer. In April 2021, we felt our time at Ramsey had come to an end. I'm currently taking a brief sabbatical while looking for what's next.
