Illustration by Ollie Hirst for this article.

Everything is as simple or complex as you want it to be.

As creators, our role is to not only look at the top, face level of what it is we build (or what inspires us) but also the many different layers of complexity contained within the thing.

That is: when we perceive the world around us we can do so with as much or as little attention to—and consideration for—detail as we want. This intention in how we perceive things influences what we can do with the information we have available on us.

Simple concepts are more efficient for communication purposes, they're easier to parse or break apart, and generally more likely to be what the general population thinks about. But simple things are also easily misunderstood and poor representations of the whole. Nothing is ever as simple as we first perceive them to be.

People, projects, devices with screens, the things we see on a screen, products we buy, apps we use, everything in the world around us are designed to be either immensely complex or plainly simple. How complex something appears to us depends mostly on how it's presented, but also how we choose to look at it. The more you look into and think about something, the more complex it becomes.

At the most simplistic level things are singular: a problem is... well, a problem. A computer is a computer. These simple generalizations are helpful for us to understand the complexity of the thing and to communicate about it.

This is an over simplification and yet it's also how we tend to view projects in our careers. You have a problem and some concept of a solution to remedy it. Simple.

If you ask a child to explain how they did something, their response usually follows this framing; first there was this, then this. Two ends of the same line. This is also how we tend to choose to view strangers on the internet, products we don't like, and politicians.

But if we really look at any of these things we start to see additional layers to it. The computer is made up of many complicated parts. The path to a project solution is rarely straight, it's often much more complex. When it comes to design problems there are constraints—technological, financial, time, energy, and others—as well as additional considerations such as unforeseen situations or pre-existing concepts not previously considered, a competitive market, access to information and insights, and so on. You may even find that what you thought as being a straight-forward problem was jut one small piece of a larger issue.

Those outside the realm of design tend to see design as simple, but those within the space understand just how complex the work can be. This is true of all careers.

When we look at something closely it becomes evident that any one problem consists of many smaller problems. When we look closer, our perspective shifts to see things in slightly more complex lens. We begin to see that there is more than just a linear path to what it is we're evaluating, there are tentacles to the complexity. We end up with something that looks more like this a tree, with roots branching out from a trunk. We can choose to look closely at the project now and see it for what it is: a mess of objectives, constraints, resources, and energy.

The problem of "how to build a computer” is made up of thousands of smaller problems: how to machine the case, how to wire circuitry and fit it into a small container, how to provide power and ensure the power source is reliable and can last for many years, how to layout keys onto the casing and the mechanics of the keys themselves. On and on the complexity goes, only ever as deep as what we're willing to look at. There are problems with thermodynamics, machine physics, and the elasticity of the materials used in the thing.

What often makes the initial problem a problem to begin with is that it entails many smaller problems. In the absence of these complexities the problem wouldn't be a problem because the solution would be straight-forward. Most things are not as simple as we anticipate them to be. People, projects, and products certainly fall into this category of being more complex than what we often see at-a-glance.

These smaller components—problems, constraints, and information—are connected in a way that influences the others as well. They're less of a branching off a central problem and more akin to a web of complexity.

Looking at a problem in terms of many smaller problems is a good way to zoom into the complexity, but there's more to the situation than looking closer at it! Not only do we need to zoom-in on all the smaller elements of something, we need to also zoom-out to see what additional problems are influence the one we've set out to solve. We end up in a space that looks something like a solar system of problems and solutions.

Where will the thing be used, in what environment? How often will it be used or abused? What are the constraints and resources available to the thing that will exist outside of it? What is the history of things like this? Suddenly what we thought of as being simple is far more elaborate, and far more reliant on things outside our initial consideration.

This is why whenever you're stuck on a problem it's easier to come up with a solution by stepping back from it—both literally and figuratively. Often the thing that has us stuck is just outside where we're looking.

Problems and concepts are rarely linear lines to solutions, nor are problems ever siloed on their own. What's more likely is that any given thing is itself a complexity to a larger ecosystem.

To really be a truly critical thinker is to consider the larger and smaller complexities of any given thing, and the interplay between them.

To be an effective product designer, engineer, product manager, data scientist, or any other function within the product development lifecycle, we must be capable of navigating the spectrum of complexity in the world around us. Doing so gives us insights into the things we build, and enable us to use the layers of complexity to our advantage. We can simplify concepts in order to communicate them with outside markets, or we can draw on the complexity of a concept in order to ensure the work we're doing is going to be long-lasting or highly effective.

In standard design practices this process of looking in and out at the problem landscape is the very first step to creating solutions. It's a divergence of perspective and thinking in order to ensure you aren't overlooking critical information that could influence how you pursue solving the problem.

Before we can seriously attempt to solve a problem, we must first understand everything around it. The more time you have to consider the landscape, the better equipped you will be for solving the problem. As Don Norman wrote in his seminal book on modern design, The Design of Everyday Things:

In design, the secret to success is to understand what the real problem is... complexity is essential, it is confusion that is undesirable.

The world around us is only ever as simple or complex as we want it to be. We control this narrative by how long and how intently we look at something. Asking questions like: "What does this consist of? What is it made of? How do the parts work together?” as well as: "What is the larger ecosystem this is part of? What outward forces play a part in how this thing comes together?” add to our ability to perceive the complexities of something.

And when we understand the whole parts of something, we're better equipped to change it. To add to it, modify it, remove it, or improve it.

In the absence of understanding the complexities we're merely setup to talk about the thing. Sometimes communication is all we need, but if we're to build or design something truly meaningful we need to look a bit closer than what's on the surface—or in the message—of any thing.

Illustration by Christian Arnder for this article.

At the local coffee shop a man behind the counter is putting food items inside a glass case. He aligns two sandwiches straight on a plate and puts it into the case, then turns his attention elsewhere as he slides the back door of the case closed.

As he does this, the glass door catches, just a little, on the end of one sandwich. The plate—and both sandwiches on it—rotate, ever so slightly, so they're no longer facing straight-on, but now they're turned at a slight angle to customers looking from the other side of the counter.

First I smile at the inconsequential accident. Then, after a moment, I realize this presentation—the now slightly rotated sandwiches—appears much more pleasing than the straight-on way they were originally placed. The food stuff appear more dynamic and captivating than the bland, dead-on presentation they were first placed in. It's a very small thing, but it conveys something worth consideration.

I don't think anyone else noticed the subtle, accidental shift. The coffee shop worker himself was seemingly oblivious to the rotation of the sandwich plate. But I could see how some individual might look at the display case in its state and mistakenly think of just how well the presentation of food items was designed. They might even think someone put deliberate effort into the presentation. Of course I knew the truth, and now so you do you.

When we look out at the world for examples of good design, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking something that might not have been all that thought-through or intentional as being inspirational. We might even turn to the designer as someone to admire and learn from.

Yet, because we often only ever see the final presentation of a design—a nicely polished image, or a snapshot of a design in-progress, captured somewhere online or even, yes, a plate of sandwiches at the local coffee shop—it's hard to know what all went into the display. For all we know the thing we find so thoughtful and well designed is actually entirely an accident.

For all we know the designs we encounter out in the world are incomplete, unintentional, or even placeholder. Not at all the high-polished, intentional works we imagine them to be.

There's a lot we can learn from the facade of something, but if we're hoping to better understand how to be more thoughtful and effective designers it's not enough to just look at what's on the forefront of any thing. Because what we see is only one small part of the story, and for all we know the process someone used for their work was flawed and what ended up working was a mistake.

Maybe it was a happy accident the creator themselves didn't realize they were making.

Illustrations by Robbie Cathro for this article.

Every creation is a product of opinion. If you want to produce high quality design you need develop a strong opinion, but one shaped by that of many others.

Opinion decides what goes into the work and what stays out of it, who the work is for and who it is not for. Opinion can shape the objectives and goals of the work while defining a line between distractions and inspiration. To have a valuable opinion of the work is to not limit yourself to only your own, personal, knowledge or experience.

The work we do is only ever as good as the multitude of perspectives and ideas that go into it. If what you're designing is going to be functional for anyone but yourself, you're going to want to get a second opinion on how it should work, appear, or feel.

Better outcomes come from hearing a diversity of perspectives.Julie Zhuo, Facebook VP of Design

Collecting opinions doesn't mean giving up accountability or responsibility. Every decision needs a single decider, someone who can own the decisions and be held accountable when things go well, or not.

But what gets handed off to the client, or to engineering or other partners, is often the result of the designer's opinion; with that delivery comes a lot of bias. We don't know what we don't know, and it's hard to see how a design might impact those who have different beliefs than us, or who aren't using the same technology, or who intend to use what we design in ways we never imagined it to be used.

To set ourselves and the work up for success it's in our best interest to shape our opinions of the work by gathering the opinions of others.

Early and often in the design process we should be building a broad perspective of the work by pulling in other's who can add to our opinion of it.

What problems might arise or what edge cases might break the design? It's helpful to know how people might get confused, or be empowered, or feel as a result of what we design. We can never know everything about how our designs will function and be received once they're out in the world, but we can try and learn what others think, feel, and perceive about the work before it makes its way outside our direct control. That is: before the design reaches a static state.

How do we gain diverse perspectives without losing focus? How do we tune-into those whose opinions can be additive to what we're building, rather than distracting? What is the best way to gather other's opinions without sacrificing our responsibility in the work?

1. Share design early and often

In design critiques or one-on-one with designers, engineers, product managers, clients—anyone on your team—share your work.

It doesn't matter what stage the work is in, the sooner you share it the sooner you can catch issues or shortcomings.

If you're afraid your work will be unfairly evaluated or that others simply won't understand it, remember that effective work can stand up on its own regardless of how we personally feel about it. An effective critique is never a critique of the designer, only the work. And you are not your work.

Sooner or later the designs you create will have to stand up without you there to defend them. By exposing the work to other opinions early and often, you end up strengthen it early and often. Because you can take those early opinions and incorporate them, or start to build "defenses” against them into the work itself.

"Many designers want to take a problem and hide away with it in order to produce the work, but that usually backfires. They want to shelter their ideas and designs but end up weakening them instead. Like an immune system that hasn't had a chance to strengthen itself against diseases. Designers who don't collaborate well end up seeing things from a very limited perspective and that hurts the designs.” — Tanner Christensen

2. Share your work with as many people as possible

Sharing work early and often is good, but if you're only ever sharing it to one person you're limiting the perspectives and opinions that can help you evolve and strengthen the design.

Your goal should be to get a broad picture of the work you're doing, and to do that you need to share it with as many people as possible. The more opinions you can get, the better. Because everyone has a unique background and lens from which they will see the work .

The goal is not to "design by committee”—having many people determine what should and should not get built—bur rather to solicit many different perspectives and opinions without giving up your responsibility for the work.

If you approach others with a clear intent to learn what they think—and when everyone knows who is responsible for the final output— these conversations become easier to navigate and leverage to your advantage.

Consider sharing your work by presenting it with one of the following introductions:

• I respect your insights and want to hear your opinion on this, I may or may not take the feedback into the next stage but really want to hear what you think, can you take a look?
• I'm trying to ensure I have all the information I need to make an informed decision in my work, can we take five minutes to have you review it?
• I want to ensure I'm getting as many opinions as I can so I can collect what others are seeing and take action on it, can I get your perspective?
• Would it be ok if I showed you some of my latest work and walk you through what I'm thinking, I want to make sure I'm not overlooking anything?

3. Clarify and re-declare your objective whenever you can

One of the most difficult parts of soliciting other's opinions of your work is ensuring the feedback you do get is aligned with what your focus or goal is.

Especially if the opinion you get from someone else is strong but not exactly what you need to hear. It can be incredibly difficult to turn away feedback or opinions without a strong rationale for why you're doing so. If you simply reject someone's opinion as being unhelpful they may not be so willing to share their perspective with you in the future.

It can also be difficult to know what feedback is actually helpful or what feedback you're rejecting simply because you don't personally agree with it.

To face the common challenges that arise when sharing work, you should always begin the conversation with what your objective is, or what the design is trying to accomplish.

One of the most vital indicators of whether an opinion should influence the work is whether it relates to your objective. When the objective is unclear or different than what others are thinking, the feedback will be less helpful than ideal.

When you share the work or ideas for the sake of building a stronger opinion, state and re-state the objective so everyone can align on it. Be clear by saying something along the lines of: "My purpose with this project is to get X result, I am not worried about Y or Z at this point but will consider anything that helps move the work toward those goals.”

If you feel the feedback you're getting isn't helpful, or that the opinions being shared are too removed from the objective of the work, take a minute to re-declare them. Not only will it help the person or people giving you their opinion, doing so will also help you re-orient yourself around the purpose of why you're looking for feedback.

Sharing your work and asking others for their opinion of it is not an excuse or a reason to give up responsibility. At the end of the day the designs you create are yours alone, not anyone elses.

If you want to ensure your design succeed you'll want to collect many different opinions of it before it's considered "complete.”

The more diverse opinions you can collect about your work, early and often, the more likely the design is to stand triumphantly against any challenges it faces in the future, especially once it's left your hands.

Illustration by Olga Epikhina for this article.

Edge cases can be difficult—even impossible—to define. Thankfully there are strategies to spotlight where edge cases are likely to hide, and you can use these strategies without changing much of your existing design process.

Of course, considering edge cases matters because what inevitably happens when they're ignored is something, somewhere in what's built gets overlooked. And when a product is built without consideration for how it might stretch, break, or be abused, those using the product are the ones who suffer most.

A headline in another language is translated into a much longer string and breaks the layout of the information on the page. Coming from a content writer, the text for a button label is too long to fit in the designed space, so it gets truncated and ends up failing to effectively communicate the button's purpose.

Or a bad actor — hoping to do harm to users of the product — takes advantage of a profile picture feature by uploading lewd photos for their avatar or stealing other's photos for illicit purposes. Or the product is used for something it was never intended to, psychologically or physically hurting someone in the process. A protected class of people go unrepresented and can't use the product at all, or those who need accessible functionality — screen readers or dynamic type sizing, for example — don't get what they need in a crucial part of using the product.

We call these types of occurrences "edge cases” because they typically fall outside the defined operating parameters of the project scope.

The task of ensuring a product is flexible enough to withstand edge cases is everyone's job. However designers have a unique responsibility to ensure everything someone sees, interacts with, or gains context from within the product, is capable of withstanding as many edge cases as possible.

However, we can't—despite our best intentions—uncover every possible edge case for what it is we're designing. The world is just too big and too complex to cover everything every possible user may encounter.

Instead, we should strive to be aware of the far edges of possibilities, quite literally the edges, in order to make more informed design decisions.

1. Think at extreme scales

When we design, we should consider anything that can be big to be colossal, and anything that can be small as being microscopic.

Thinking in such extremes ensures our work will scale, even for situations the team my not be readily accounting for.

A text input field will need to work for one input character or 10,000. A button will need to work for a twelve character label and the 80 character equivalent in another language. A nice 14 point type paragraph on our screen might be viewed at a super high resolution to appear as though it's just 11 point, it may also be viewed by someone with their browser base font size set to 120 points. A tab structure will need to support one single tab and maybe three dozen in the future. A drop-down menu will need to account for a single item or maybe 25,000.

We should consider scale outside of visual decisions as well: a user may navigate one screen in our product while another person buries themselves 100 screens deep. In either case: how do we help those users navigate where they need to go? How do we communicate where they are in the experience? Or consider how a user may want to upload a single photo or 40,500. The product may generate one message or error as part of a workflow or possibly 200.

How do you design for each of these extremes? What happens when the design is carefully crafted for one extreme but not the other end? There is no right or necessarily "best” way to answer these questions, as each will be depending on the platform being designed for, business objectives, design systems, etc. Some extremes may never actually even occur.

By accounting for each of these scales we ensure the product can deal with them as best as possible if they ever do take place.

2. Consider accessibility as sense difference

When designing for a digital app that relies on touch input, some users won't have the ability to use touch. Others may have extreme touch sensitivity.

The sames goes for being able to see and read the screen: according to some reports more than 10% of the global population have some variation of colorblindness. The World Health Organization estimates 1.3 billion people around the globe have some form of visual imparement, ranging from distance related problems to totally blindness.

One in five people in the United States have some type of disability which hinders their ability to use digital products in some form. And then there's a whole slew of other disabilities which impact people who may encounter your designs at one point or another: mental illness or cognitively damaging diseases, emotional states and ability, and more.

While product teams tend to talk about accessibility in terms of the most common physical disabilities—typically that of visual or motor impairment—there are many, many forms of accessibility issues which reside at the edges of research or trends.

To cover accessibility edge cases we should consider each of the five senses—touch, sight, hearing, taste, and even smell—as they relate to the product experience and how those sense can be taken to extremes.

It's good to design for people who may have poor vision or issues with color differentiate, but what about those with overly sensitive vision? How do you ensure a high visual contrast ratio for a screen isn't also going to hinder someone who is experiencing visual fatigue, for example? What do you do to ensure audible screen reader cues in an app don't also clutter up the interface for style-free visual readers—that is: users who have deliberately disabled style sheets on web products?

If we think of accessibility as differences of senses a whole world of considerations opens up to us as digital creators.

How do we ensure our products are easily digestible for the person who experiences debilitating migraines and can only consume digital experiences in daily micro doses? What can our designs do to help those who may rely on their eyes to navigate and interact with technology rather than their hands? How do we ensure things like auto-playing videos work effectively for those with hearing impairment or whose hearing is overly sensitive?

Here again there is no one right answer. It's up to you and your team to determine what's right for your product and which edge cases matter most and which can simply inform how design decisions are made.

3. Design for the lowest denominator in technology

In 2015 there were 24,000 unique devices—phones, tablets, etc.—running the Android operating system. Today that number is much, much larger. And that's just one operating system. There are ~27 different devices today that can run Apple's iOS operating system, phones, iTouch devices, and iPads. Then there are hundreds of thousands of other different types of devices that can access the web and run software on similar operating systems.

A product team may be building for one or two OSes, but how many unique device types are they building for? If you're building for Android—as an example—the number is more than 24,000. For iOS, it's more than 20. Yet how often do product teams test and ensure a quality experience on more than one or two devices? What about internet connection speeds? Or device manufacture age?

A modern app may run smoothly on the latest Google Pixel 3a or the iPhone XS, but it might also run painfully slow on a Sony phone from eight years ago (the typical life span of a smartphone in India).

As product designers we must consider not merely human edge cases but also technological ones too.

Elaborate animations to communicate information on a screen might feel advantageous to users, but what if the device the person is viewing the animation on takes more than a few seconds to render each frame? Or consider how a complex page may look great on a brand new, 5120x2880 iMac screen, only to look like a jumbled mess on a 480x800 Samsung Galaxy Star Advance phone. What about the person browsing our website or app on a 1 TB internet connection as opposed to the person on a 23.43 Mbps connection, how is what we're building work effectively and efficiently for each?

How do you design a smooth navigation experience for someone who has a brand new, fresh-out-of-the-box iPhone versus the person who is using an older phone with a completely cracked glass screen; having to scroll endlessly on one of those devices is a physically painful experience.

When building digital products we should consider not only the limitations of those who encounter our work, but also the technologies they'll be using.

Here is one powerful thing to do in order to accommodate different technologies: focus on the lowest denominator. The smallest screen size and the most debilitated tech. Because the people with the biggest screens, fastest connections, and most powerful devices will get the benefit of the minimal experience regardless, but if you design for the "best in tech” experience those at the lowest end suffer.

Again, however, the solution will vary depending on who you're optimizing the experience for.

4. Remember that intentions scale too

The last strategy is to scale to extreme intentions. Most people will want to use an experience as it was designed, but there are those who will fall at extremes.

People looking to cause harm—known as "bad actors”—will seek to take advantage of the product to inflict damage, while others may want to do "good” at scale as well.

Bad actors will take advantage of anything in the product to harm others or the business. They will flood input forms with spam, utilize image socialization to spread vulgar or misleading photos, or poke around for holes in data validation to steal information or crash servers. The bad actor's intentions tell us as product builders that anything which can be used for harm will be.

On the other end of the scale are good actors who want to utilize the product as intended, but at extremes. They're the ones who use Twitter or Facebook at every minute of every hour of every day. They capitalize on free bandwidth offered by products like Dropbox or Google Photos to upload and share every possible photo for friends and family.

To design for intentions we should consider each extreme.

How might information be used against other users or our business in the product we design? How will we communicate effective and healthy behaviors to those who wish to cause harm or who might be spending a bit too much time in our products? What can be done to mitigate the private data of good actors that becomes accessible to bad actors due to complex privacy settings?

In each case our job as product designers is to consider these questions and keep them in mind as we work. We may not be able to catch every situation that will occur, but we can be diligent about closing gaps and resolving problems whenever they make themselves known.

Working closely with product managers and engineers—as well as researchers, content strategists, and business leaders—to keep these extreme intentions in mind can set us up for success.

We may never be able to identify and plan for every possible use case, but we can look for areas where when something may go wrong the experience is flexible enough to meet it.

To do so we should consider thinking at extreme scales, considering accessibility in terms of sense difference in people using what we design, focus on the lowest denominator when it comes to technology, and remember that intentions scale too.

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Illustration by Therrious Davis for this article.

Have you ever looked at a design, read an article or tweet from a designer, or seen an update to a popular product and thought to yourself: "I could have done so much better!” or "Why did they decide to do this?!”

I know I have.

Unfortunately this is a harmful way of approaching anything we deem as "low quality" out in the world, whether in a design critique, a forum, the news, or elsewhere.

Especially as designers—whose skillset should entail the ability to temporarily step outside and away from our own, limited perspectives—such limited thinking hurts our ability to be empathetic, impactful creators for those we serve.

What we tend to overlook when first responding to the work of others with critical aghast is the fact that in these situations there's more that has taken place behind the scenes than we're aware of. We simply don't have enough insight into just how much work and decision making took place to make an informed judgement about the thing we're looking at.

And yet we critically and openly make face-value judgements.

We rarely see the constraints, pushback, perspectives, and objectives others are working with. We can hardly know whether the work was even meant for someone like us, or if the audience is an entirely different group of people with different beliefs, ways of seeing things, or needs. Readily jumping to any conclusions without first considering these aspects means we're shutting off and rejecting work that may otherwise actually be "good” or even remarkable.

In this way: we're limiting what we can learn from the world around us.

I was reminded of this while reading Why Bad Things Happen to Good Decisions over on the Farnam Street blog:

When other people make decisions with bad outcomes, we tend to focus on the people behind the decision. We can't seem to shake the belief that good people make good decisions and bad people make bad decisions. It's easy to think that we would have made a better decision.

The article continues:

"When our decisions have bad outcomes we know the outcomes is not all there is to see. Our thoughts and intentions come into play. We can't see the thoughts and intentions of others—we only see their actions through a biased lens."

While the Farnham Street article is primarily about evaluating decisions—ours and those of others—the point is strikingly relevant to how we judge the work of others too.

We can't see the intentions behind work we deem as "bad” so we readily assume it's garbage. The inverse is often true as well: we assume a good designer we admire is only capable of producing good work, so we celebrate it even if it fails to meet the needs of those it was designed for.

Let me give you one recent example of how immediate judgement leads to short-sightedness in the world of design.

When Google announced they were releasing 53 gender fluid emoji, the announcement was shared to a prominent design group I'm part of on Facebook. There the comments ranged from "Why would they ever do this?” to "This is completely unnecessary and dumb!”

Something I noted while reading through the comments was that the vast majority (98% by my count) came from well-off, white males. Females and gender fluid designers simply didn't comment because the toxicity and criticism was already prevalent in the comment thread.

I asked the community there how many of them had considered that this announcement wasn't for them? I stated:

The cost of creating more emoji is minimal but the upside is potentially hundreds of thousands if not *millions* of people feeling included and better capable of expressing themselves how billions of others do… Why would you want to deliberately exclude people from this if you knew there was a way to solve it?

Emojis are great for expressing oneself, but if you find you couldn't express yourself effectively what would you do? Imagine using emoji where the only skin color available is that of a race you are not. Or that the only activity-based emoji are people who are disabled. How would you feel? What would you do? Would you feel better or worse in that hypothetical to hear the companies were working on more emoji to help people like yourself better express themself?”

Here is just a small example of my point, but it feels like a recurring scenario in the broader design industry. We're lightning quick to critically chastise something we feel is low quality, unnecessary, overly complex, or otherwise "dumb.” We do so without first analyzing the merits, objectives, and execution of the thing.

What we should be doing whenever we encounter something we disagree with or question is acknowledge that first response but then proactively dig deeper to step away from our lens of evaluation in order to get a clearer picture of what is actually sitting in front of us.

If we want to be better designers we must learn to see from perspectives that are not our own. This includes perspectives we may not readily be able to access or understand.