“Failure and loss can be good. If you aren’t finding failure in your design work, then you aren’t really exploring all the possible solutions… Failure is not an end result if we have purpose and intention. It’s only a marker along the road to designing great experiences.” – Francisco Inchauste

Read more in Francisco’s article “Failure by Design.”

1. To be great designers, we need to improve our mental game
2. Great experiences have an innate ability to change the way we view the world
3. Confusion and clutter are the failure of design, not the attributes of information

“In the end, simplicity for its own sake should not be the goal. Balancing the amount of complexity that we engage with is something that UX people deal with on a daily basis. A good experience should be the result of using UX design to find what is meaningful to that end user and present it in the best way possible.” – Francisco Inchauste

Read more in Francisco’s article “The Dirtiest Word in UX: Complexity.”

1. The goal of human-centered design is to tame complexity
2. Simplicity vs. Clarity
3. There is a delicate balance between the simplicity of use and the complexity of usefulness

“To be great designers, we need to improve our mental game. We have many ways to get our minds in shape to be the best tool in our arsenal. When we get in the ring with the client, we need to be ready to take some punches. We also need to be trained and armed with the fundamentals so that we can help clients understand that we’re not just sharing our feelings or loose opinions but that we have sound reasons behind our design choices.” – Francisco Inchauste

Read more in the Smashing Magazine article “The Dying Art of Design.”

1. Failure is a marker along the road to designing great experiences
2. Businesses need to do more than hire designers. They need to be designers.
3. Great designers demand great design in everything they do

“Storytelling offers a way for the team to really understand what they are building and the audience that they are creating it for. Stories allow for the most complex of ideas to be effectively conveyed to a variety of people. This designed product/experience can then offer meaning and emotion for its users.” – Francisco Inchauste

Read more in Francisco’s Smashing Magazine article “Better User Experience With Storytelling – Part One.”

1. Great design is storytelling at its finest
2. At the end of the day, the job of the (UX) designer is to help tell a story that is relevant and meaningful
3. Design products that appeal to both cognition and emotion for a competitive advantage