Manifesto of a Chronic Overexplainer
Hello! I'm Jessica Speigel and I'm a designer. You might wonder what type of designer I am. Fashion and interior design are by far the two most common guesses. This is where I begin to over-explain that although I received my degree from the University of Washington in design studies—which I also have to clarify as being an interdisciplinary design program that blends academic electives, classes focusing on how design and society interact, and problem finding into one delicious whole—I also am a visual communicator, i.e. graphic designer. I usually try to stop there, although my inner-designer wants to continue explaining what I really do.
Why is it so difficult? I'm not commitment-phobic. What's wrong is that the lines between design disciplines have become so blurred there is little meaning left. But, I'm happy to report, after years of overexplaining or oversimplifying, I've finally nailed down what it is that I do. It turns out, I'm a user experience designer after all. Depending on who you ask, this could mean I design anything from simple websites to benevolent robots, but these definitions are oversimplified. The way I see it, designers identify and address problems in order to meet the needs of people. Sometimes the need will be such that a single design artifact, such as a poster or book, can solve it. But these days, what often needs to happen is for the designer to think through how the user feels at every point in experiencing the problem and design a system around meeting the needs that arise at each step. The solution may involve many design artifacts, or none at all.
I have always been incredibly concerned with how my audience feels at each step of the problem that I'm addressing with my design solution, whatever form(s) it may take. Even a book, which is a classic visual communication design problem, I look at as an interactive problem. The experience of the book is as time-based as any video. I was reading a book a few months ago and noticed about halfway through there were subtle little illustrations in the corners that made a flip book animation if you flipped through them quickly. Not to say that would be appropriate for every book, but in this case, it was a little gift to me right from the designer of that book, and I appreciated it.
I think we designers would all do well to challenge our assumptions about the nature of so-called "classic" design problems and look at them in a new light by asking ourselves what our users are feeling each step of the way, and what gifts we can leave for them on the path from problem to solution.
Thanks for visiting!