Let your default system be good.
Because if not, this can make your products or system outdated.
It's not good when it gets associated with you. So change.
Improve. Pivot. Adapt.
Let not being outdated be associated with you.
Have a growth mindset.
Handcrafted, Analog, Manual, By-Hand
— these don't necessarily mean outdated.
They can be associated with:
Tailored, Custom-made, Bespoke...
so on and so forth.
The difference lies in the quality, standard, level of craftsmanship, attention to detail, and rarity.
Professionals who can operate at this level are the ones trained, highly skilled, equipped, and experienced, who can build something from scratch.
Building From Scratch
Requires one to be creative, resourceful, and bold.
While anybody with an idea can try to build something from scratch, not everyone is equipped with the training and experience to do it professionally. What does "professionally" mean?
A Professional can simply be described as someone paid for what he does. A professional is also someone equipped with knowledge, experience, and tools, that allow him or her to do the job well, to know what is required for the job, and also be able to diagnose and recommend solutions to a problem in his/her chosen field. The professional has the discipline and work ethic to complete the job and fulfill an agreement (eg. a contract).
Ok, so...
If you have a professional in your team who has the courage, creativity, and skills to build something from scratch:
Is building from scratch the best way to go?
This is where Diagnosing before Prescribing a Solution comes first.
Just as brands are developed and built by identifying and communicating their Unique Selling Point (USP) — which is what differentiates them from other brands, from this we can understand that each brand has unique sets of challenges that require "bespoke" solutions.
A Product / A Service / A Business Idea
Everything created in this world starts with an idea. Each idea can develop into a concept, that can turn into a Product, a Service, or a Business Idea. Each brand or product is in its own stage from idea to execution.
Someone with an idea can start exploring it, sharing it, building it, and testing it. In this early stage, one has to build it fast, to ship it fast, to test it fast aka Fail Fast and Fall Forward. That's why we hear about Minimum Viable Product (MVP), which is evolving into Minimum Lovable Product (MLP) and other derivations (as it gets refined and developed by authors who give their own spin on it, sharing their idea and branding it). This also alludes to the idea of starting with "the lowest hanging fruit" which I first heard from a businessman, a real-estate developer who wanted to go into Fintech.
Speaking of MVPs, to start with the lowest-hanging fruit, enter the Founder / Startup way whose first goal is to ship MVPs by working with the other option of using:
TEMPLATES
Start with a good template.
For Product Designers, UX / UI / IX Designers, this can mean starting with a good template. But who is better qualified to select a template for you to start with a good one? The Designer!
Designers create products for a purpose, starting by knowing what's the objective, and go about fulfilling that objective, following design principles, and undergoing processes and methodologies. In other words, they are trained professionals.
Designers have the eye to know if a template is good by looking at the UI, testing and exploring it to check the UX if it's good to build on it with the client's product and brand vision in mind, and diagnose it based on the client's purpose, objective, situation, goals and resources.
Case in Point: MUI | Mui.com
Using tools like MUI can help you build and ship out Minimum Viable Product (MVP) fast.
Why has MUI become popular?
I noticed that MUI's products (templates) are made: For Business Owners / Founders / CEOs, For Designers, and For Developers. This helps businesses scale from an idea to a prototype to a full-fledged product. To me, it is synonymous with Design System.
As a Business Owner / CEO / Founder*, you can begin developing and testing your idea using MUI's templates even if you still don't have a designer or developer on board. *(Founders can be trained and/or professional designers or developers themselves, too.)
As a Product / UX / UI Designer, MUI provides Design Kits that will help you flesh out and customize the MUI template according to the company's branding guidelines. And then build a Design System with the components in place.
For Developers, they can add functionality using the templates as placeholders for the UI, also editing the built-in components, and customize it according to the product design and objectives.
Templates these days, to me, are synonymous to...
FRAMEWORKS
If Design has Templates, Ideas have Frameworks
The Beauty of UX: User Experience Design is in its holistic approach and in its advocacy in bringing to the table the Business Owner, the Designer and Developer, and everyone involved to collaborate, to be united in their vision and mission of the company or brand while doing what each one does best and what each of their roles requires to create a product, a service, market it and make a sustainable livelihood.
UX Design is concerned with the Business Idea, the Product Design, the User Interface Design, and the marketing and after-sales experience, which should be reflected in the product, the interface, to make the overall experience pleasant to its target users and customers.
Delightful! Loveable! — this is the kind of feedback a business owner wants to attain that gives them a reason to hire UX Designers, Product Designers, UI (User Interface), and IX (Interaction) Designers.
Until Business Owners and Founders care about their users and customer feedback, it would not make sense for them to hire designers at all, which really is backwards, and going back to pre-pandemic era when businessmen would only focus on making money, and the designer makes this look good, and developers only care about resolving tickets, causing a lot of friction in between each other, reflecting in the system and resulting in an unsatisfactory product, unpleasant service, terrible customer experience and failed business.
The good news is that the job market has matured with the rise of popularity of UX Design, Product Design, UI (User Interface), and IX (Interaction) Design, bringing Designers into the spotlight.
These days business owners and their target consumers understand that having a good design will help one survive in this post-pandemic era.
Let's design a better world!
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