Design Exploration Just Because
We were talking about one of those recent project which came in sideways. During a meeting, a major stakeholder stumbled across the germ of an idea and decided to task the design team with some “big idea thinking” around it, requesting to be wowed by some ideas. While open exploration of big design ideas is great and necessary, it can be problematic if stakeholders have pre-conceived expectations of what’s possible, or view the presentations of these requested big ideas as promises that can be fulfilled.
This isn’t how design, as a department in an organization, is usually supposed to work. This is R&D. Of course, design exploration is an important part of product design — one of the major early steps in any project — but it’s not something that should be requested on a whim. This is especially true when you’re already deep into a product’s roadmap, as we currently are.