“The process of design starts with exploration, but ends with refinement. The best designers carefully move from one to the other, making sure they spend enough time exploring before locking themselves into a design approach.” – Jared Spool
Read more in Jared’s article “Exploring Options and Making Decisions.”
“We don’t spend enough time up front on projects discussing, assessing, defining and refining the value of what we make. We jump too quickly into design and build before applying rigor to what we make. It’s easy to get lost in the product detail: a screen, code and forget what the product’s value is and who you are building it for. Everything we do should be to help move the product a little closer to success.” – Daniel Szuc
This quote is from Daniel’s article “The Value of asking ‘Why?’”
“Designers are optimistic people who are trained to be courageous about the future—and making the future happen. They aren’t always aware of the intricacies of operations and the impacts of the solutions they propose, just like entrepreneurs, but they aren’t afraid of confronting a blank piece of paper (or screen or board) and getting to work making something new.” – Nathan Shedroff
This quote is from Kate Rutter’s 2008 interview with Nathan on the subject of the role of design in business.
“Designers don’t actually ‘solve’ problems. They ‘work through’ them. They use non-logical processes that are difficult to express in words but easier to express in action. They use models, mockups, sketches, and stories as their vocabulary. They operate in the space between knowing and doing, prototyping new solutions that arise from their four strengths of empathy, intuition, imagination, and idealism.” – The Designful Company by Marty Neumeier
Check out Marty’s book The Designful Company for his thoughts on “how to build a culture of nonstop innovation.”
Catriona Cornett