Design is hard. No scrap that - design is really hard.

Let me start by saying the usual disclaimer, I’m a designer who is not happy with his designs.

I usually approach each piece in a similar way, excitement, joy, DREAD with a splash of confidence. Roll on to the end of the project, we, the team have done user testing, meetings, prototyping, pushes, meetings, drops, merges, meetings, amends, and pushed to live then we rip the stats apart and keep “fixing”.

So, overall - it’s a tiring process, design can take it all, you put so much into your work that when it goes live, a piece of you goes live - you put your time, effort and trust in this project and if the user loves it you get the eternal high, but failure brings doom and gloom and an instant access to questions like “do I even know what I’m doing?”, “I’m the worst designer in the world”.

After all that investment, I then have to put up with people telling me “that design is easy”, or “I designed this website”, with no input from years of UX education, user feedback, no learnings about that “design gut” reaction that we all live off.

My first boss once told me “I warn you, everyone can design, due to its hobbyist nature”.

14 years later - he’s still on the money.

What’s a blog post without the fix?

I believe, as with everything the fix comes with education, educating everyone around you, it could just be as simple as being honest - tell them you care about user needs, you care about getting it right - it’s not as easy as just putting the header and a big image in.

Design is changing, and we are the power behind it if you want to be respected more - you have to educate and share your journey.

I’m trying to educate friends, family and strangers, join me in this crusade.

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