Exposure

"Designers spend too much time with other designers. I say this as a designer myself. It's not that hanging out with designers is bad. They're cool people. But every hour spent talking shop with fellow designers is an hour not spent building relationships that could genuinely improve the quality of your work. Designers often take pride in being introverts. Left alone with our work, we'd do anything to avoid having to talk to someone."

"This also connects to something designers hear constantly: participate in more research. Test your designs. Meet more users. Why do people keep saying this? It's not a ding on designers. It's a call for designers to be more informed. Better informed. And more often than not, we aren't. Design is synthesizing the world of your users into your solutions. Solutions need to work within the user's context. But most designers rarely take time to expose themselves to the realities of that context."

"You are creative when you see things others don't. Not necessarily new visuals, but new correlations. Connections between concepts. Problems that aren't obvious until someone points them out. And you can't see what you're not exposed to. Improving as a designer is really about increasing your exposure. Getting different experiences and widening your input of information from different sources. That exposure can take many forms. Conversations with fellow builders like PMs, engineers"

Designers often limit themselves by spending too much time with other designers, reducing exposure to real-world contexts. Introversion and comfort in peer conversations can prevent important learning from users, PMs, sales, and engineers. Regular research, user testing, and cross-team conversations deliver critical insights about people, markets, and product problems. Creativity arises from recognizing unexpected correlations and contextual realities. Increasing exposure through varied experiences, industry reading, product exploration, and engaging other teams broadens input and leads to better-informed design decisions. Building relationships outside the design community directly improves the relevance and quality of design solutions.

Read at hvpandya.com