A 60-second crash course on quick thinking for designers

A 60-second crash course on quick thinking for designers:

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Over the last 14 years, I’ve spent my design career working on product teams with aggressive shipping cycles.

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This forced me to get competent in making snap-decision trade-offs every day.f

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I tried a few lofty frameworks to improve my speed. But it was a simpler 3-question operation that made me fast on my feet.

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When faced with a decision, I ask myself these questions, in this order:

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1. What bet is the company making?

2. What design bets can support the company bet?

3. What is the weight of available information?

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It breaks down like this:

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1. What bet is the company making?

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On the macro level, how are we planning to win in the market? There are four categories of macro-level bets:

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- Velocity: We win by getting our offering to market faster

- Efficiency: We win by managing our waste better

- Accuracy: We win by being right more often

- Innovation: We win by discovering untapped market potential

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Which category best describes your company's current position?

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2. What design bets can support the company bet?

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- For Velocity: Reduce time-to-delivery, reuse existing components, find metaphors in other markets.

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- For Efficiency: Creating design systems, reusing existing patterns, reducing work-in-progress.

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- For Accuracy: Stronger research, measuring product performance with instrumentation, discovery sprints.

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- For Innovation: Uncovering “fog of war” with better discovery, finding parallels for good patterns in other markets.

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3. What is the weight of available information?

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I use a linear process for weighing information in time-sensitive scenarios. It goes like this: User research > Customer familiarity > Institutional knowledge.

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In the absence of user research, rely on what our customers are familiar with. If we don't know they're familiar with, rely on best practices (or strong opinions, loosely held).