The internal compass of good design
On creating designs that emerge from principles, collabs, and insights
There's a moment in every designer's career when they realize that copying what's cool isn't design—it's decoration.
I've been thinking about this lately, particularly as I observe teams chase the latest interface trends (ahem, “liquid glass”) while their users struggle with fundamental interaction problems that have nothing to do with glassmorphism or the current color of the year. 🙄 Sigh…
Good design, I've long believed, does not arise from mimicry. It emerges from something far more substantial: a disciplined convergence of relevant principles, healthy collaboration, and continuous learning. It's about developing an internal compass that points not toward what's popular, but toward what clearly, authentically serves your customers. 🧭
Let’s take a closer look…
🏛️ The Three Pillars
UX principles as your foundation. Principles aren't stylish posters on conference room walls — they help arbitrate hard decisions or compromises you make when stakeholders want the shiny thing and you know it's wrong for the users. They're the "why" behind every "what," the foundation that keeps you grounded when the industry's attention shifts to the next shiny object. 😬 Not easy!
The most effective design teams I've worked with regard principles kinda like functional requirements: tailored to the moment and non-negotiable to what matters. Such principles don't say "make it simple and intuitive" (that’s basic table stakes)…but they articulate what it means given the company’s context, for their users, solving their problems, like in solar/climate or healthcare or fintech or office productivity.
Acknowledge and honor the context/space you are operating within. It really matters for articulating a principle that relates to what’s important and relevant.
Healthy collaboration as your catalyst. Design doesn't happen in isolation of course, and neither does good product development. The real magic happens in those messy, wrangling conversations where engineering constraints meet user needs, where business goals bump up against technical realities, where someone says "hey, what if we tried..." and everyone leans in with skeptical curiosity. 😊 Good friction is healthy! There’s a kind of “checks & balances” aspect to ensure no one viewpoint derails the effort, into something heavily imbalanced (like too techie, too stylish, too feature-driven).
But here's the thing about collaboration: it requires psychological safety to be truly productive. When designers feel safe to present half-formed ideas, when engineers can push back on feasibility without being dismissed, when product managers can share business constraints without being seen as the enemy — that's when breakthrough solutions emerge! ⚡️
Learning cycles as your compass. This is basically where the rubber meets the road. All the principles & collaboration in the world mean nothing if you're not testing your assumptions against reality. Good design requires the humility to be wrong and the discipline to learn from it quickly. 🙌🏽
I think of this as creating a continuous feedback loop that's both tight and meaningful. Not just A/B testing button colors (that’s one specific way, of course), but understanding the deeper patterns of how people actually use what you've built. What are their expectations, perceptions, routines and habits? How do they respond to what you’ve proposed and prototyped? How does it evolve your team’s approach going forward? What hypothesis has been disproven and why?
It's research that informs product strategy, not just measurable tactics.
This “velocity of learning” as I call it matters as much as the pixel/code quality. Teams that can iterate bi-weekly learn faster than teams that plan quarterly. But speed without direction is just chaos, which is why you need those principles and that collaborative foundation! 😊 That’s how these pillars all fit together…
🪬 The emergence of authenticity
When these three pillars all support each other together, something powerful happens: design that feels authentic to your company and useful to your users begins to emerge! Not because you planned every detail, but because you created the conditions for good solutions to surface. Aha! That’s the real trick. ✨
This is the opposite of following trendy/fashionable design — copying cool forms without understanding the function or utility/value. It's about developing a sense of taste that's rooted in your specific context, your users' critical unsolved needs, your team's constraints and capabilities.
The best cross-functional teams embody this quality — you can look at their work and immediately recognize it as theirs, not necessarily because of a distinctive visual style (though it might!), but because the decision-making process is so coherent and user-centered that it produces a natural consistency. 🙌🏽 That’s what makes it.
🌅 The long game, to the horizons…
Building this kind of mature design capability isn't quick — not really possible in an afternoon workshop. It requires deep continuous investment in relationships, in research capabilities, in the rigorous work of evangelizing and refining processes.
It means saying “No” to a quick delivery win that compromises the long-term vision.
Yet here's what I've learned over the past 20+ years: companies that invest in this foundational work don't just build better products, they build better cultures. They attract better talent. They make better decisions. They create products that users don't just use, but love. ❤️ Who doesn’t want that? But who’s willing to be brave enough to advocate for it amidst pressure for short-term metrics? 🤨
So this internal design compass isn't just about having the right direction — it's about knowing who you are and where you're going, as a matter of organizational integrity, and evolution.
In a world of infinite design possibilities, that clarity becomes your greatest competitive advantage. Else you risk bouncing about in the tumultuous winds of shallow opinions, fragile egos, broken processes — not a good place at all. 😬
And unlike the latest design trend, clarity never goes out of style. 😎
What's your internal compass pointing toward? How do you balance external inspiration with internal coherence? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.