Visionary designers have lost their conceptual integrity to an industrial complex optimized for consensus, predictability, and short-term business gain. The rise of customer-obsession mantra and data-driven culture cultivated a generation of designers who only take risk-free and success-guaranteed steps towards the inevitable local maxima of design monotony.
You just handed off a major redesign. Three months of research, twenty-seven major revisions, and hundreds cups of coffee have all culminated in this pinnacle of glory. It’s finally done!
Except it’s not.
It’s not, even after you have answered every single question the developers have about your red-line.
It’s not, even after you have addressed all the technical constraints developers encountered during the implementation.
It’s not, even after you meticulously documented all the patterns and styles into a library for reference and reuse.
It’s not, because neither you nor the developers have talked to a real user. At the bottom of your heart, you are secretly wishing:
My design looks great on paper, so let’s keep it on paper.
Is there positive value to recognizing an invisible Design Concept as a real entity in design conversations? I think so.
First, great designs have conceptual integrity—unity, economy, clarity. They not only work, they delight, as Vitruvius first articulated. We use terms such as elegant, clean, beautiful to talk about bridges, sonatas, circuits, bicycles, computers, and iPhones. Recognizing the Design Concept as an entity helps us to seek its integrity in our own solo designs, to work together for it in team designs, and to teach it to our youth.
Second, talking frequently about the Design Concept as such vastly aids communication within a design team. Unity of concept is the goal; it is achieved only by much conversation.
Thus, moviemakers use storyboards to keep their design conversations focused on the Design Concept, rather than on implementation details.