Design well by knowing people

I understand that some people are too brilliant to be in our company. They operate on a higher level, and they get impatient with people who cannot intellectually keep up.

But intelligent geeks should try not to be big a-holes when interacting with "normal" people, especially when the geeks are designing solutions to make life easier for the rest of us.

Jun 13, 2014 - Medium.com - Designers Who Dismiss People Who Like Sports

Some excerpts:

I don’t believe you can be a strong designer without empathy. And the first step towards empathy is not making fun of what other people enjoy.

... a designer who doesn’t understand a subculture, and who doesn’t actively seek to understand it, and stoops as far as to make fun of it, can’t be great.

Despite what designers say, it’s not that hard to design for yourself. Designing for people different than you is far harder.

Every type of person, every hobby, every strange subculture you don’t understand holds insights you may not yet have as a designer. And the calling requires those insights if you truly want to design and not just push pixels around.

Not that you have to like or understand sports. You just have to like and understand people. If you can’t, if you are quick to dismiss those different than you, you’ll never relate to people unlike you. And you’ll never be a great designer.

#design