Leading with design context or design control?
It’s been a few months since Reed Hastings released No Rules Rules, a book about how culture was built at Netflix. In the book, Reed talks about leading with context over control. Leaders at Netflix are encouraged to give individuals in their teams context and empower them to get the job done. Unless you’re in a safety critical industry such as healthcare or energy, according to Reed you should never need to lead with control.
This got me thinking about how much control exists in design. I think it’s a lot. More than other areas, like engineering, product management, or marketing. Which begs the question — why is there so much control in such a creative field? I believe it comes down to subjectivity.
So let’s say a designer gets asked to create an account sign-up flow by their manager. It has all the normal things you’d expect — email, name, a few other details and a big ol’ button. The designer feels good, they created multiple concepts, they tested it, they think this sign-up flow is the bees knees.
The designer’s manager comes along, takes one look at it and says ‘mmm it doesn’t feel right to me, what if we do it this way?’. 99% of the time you’ll end up going with the manager’s design in this scenario. Let’s take stock of what we’re left with here:
- A demoralized designer who feels their efforts have been wasted
- A manager who believes they may have hurt some feelings but they are ultimately saving the product
- Maybe a better solution, maybe not?
So what could have been done better here if the manager led this task with context? Well, they could have provided examples of what they felt are great sign-up flows. They could have given extra information around the purpose and goals of this flow. They could have set expectations around how they imagine a flow like this could be tested.
Ultimately, a designer should be empowered to follow their own design direction. This is the least they’ve earned if you’ve provided them enough context.
