Fast Design
“Could you design this faster?”.
My dear friend was once asked in a meeting. He was confused. He replied, to his boss, “Yes, I could, but it might as good if I get more time.”
“We’ve got no time. We gotta push ourselves. Get it done fast”, they pressed.
“Fast it shall be”, he replied.
The design industry has been obsessed with speed. As technology, design aspires to be fast. Accelerated. Groundless.
Ready to buy templates, mockups, ‘medium’ guidelines, frameworks, methods, and checklists are all the supplements designers take to design fast.
These frameworks make sure the design delivery has quality but often no meaning. No depth. No user validation.
Designers bend ethics, skimp on meaning, and close the boxes while mentioning they looked outside it. They stop questioning. They stop designing.
With the industry already overpopulated, we just cannot say, “No, We should take some time to see.” The risk of losing the client is genuine. I know it is a job, but is too much to do it morally?
Dear designer, please pause to see what you are doing. Are you working on something that can affect your life? Heck, are you even empathetic beyond your use of the word? Have you talked to some users about the problem? Is it even required? Is the problem a real problem or just a greenwash or brainwash? What are the effects it can have on the world apart from making your client rich?
Please use your powers wisely. Do not move fast and break things. Come in wisely, as designerly as you can, don’t fix it, if it is not broken. Argue about the context. Talk to users. Get you a$$ of that chair and go outside. We need you to be better than this.
Fast design is like fast food. It makes us all sick.