Designing with people who aren't designers
Most of the people deciding your design aren't designers. That's not a problem to route around - it's the job.
Early on I thought my job was to protect the design from everyone else. Stakeholders, engineers, the CEO’s nephew with opinions. Keep the work pure.
That was wrong, and a little arrogant.
The reframe
The people in the room aren’t obstacles to a good design - they’re the reason it ships. An engineer’s “that’ll be slow” is a design constraint. A salesperson’s “customers keep asking for X” is research you didn’t have to run.
The skill isn’t defending your taste. It’s making everyone else’s constraints visible enough that the right design becomes obvious to the whole room - not just to you.
Open to contract work, full-time roles, and interesting conversations about hard design problems.
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