Must Love Humans
Teemu Paananen, Unsplash
When swiping through potential partners on dating apps, it’s common to find people who self-report how important to them their relationship with man’s best friend is. So many of us keep a four-legged friend around, that a person looking for a partner that “must love dogs” is a cliché in the dating scene and the stuff of pop culture. And while various people from business and process methodologies have encouraged tech workers to love problems, not solutions, I would argue that the quality worth “swiping-right” on when considering a career in Product Design, or hiring a product designer is a love for humans.
The earth is a big, messy place, and we humans contribute more than our fair share to that messiness. We’re wonderful, horrible, loving, hateful, confident, insecure, proud, and embarrassed all at once, and we carry everything we are with us wherever we go. It shapes how we interact with each other, and is the baggage we bring to the tools we use in our lives. Where one person sees a product as being simple, easy, and satisfactory, another might experience it as complicated, difficult, and insufficient for their needs. Really going deep on solving problems for these people requires love. Not a romantic love, but a love made from forming empathetic relationships and respecting the real-life people on the other side of our creations.
No matter how good a designer is, the product they design can’t and won’t be fit for everyone. The needs and abilities of people vary so widely, there are virtually no products on the planet that can achieve that goal. Perhaps you can recall a time where someone you were with didn’t even agree on the best utensil to eat the meal you’re sharing. It can be slightly unsettling to see someone choose to navigate a bowl of rice with a fork, when you feel so much more confident wielding a spoon, or perhaps a pair of chopsticks for the same task. What love does in these moments, is shape our mindset – instead of that unsettled feeling turning into disgust, or beguilement, love can fill you with curiosity, and even delight. It can be the difference between thinking “Why on earth…” and “I should try that!”
Every product designer will inevitably create something that users end up confused by, or even loathsome of. I am no exception. Choosing love, and pivoting your work based on the feedback from your users will make for a better designer. All things being equal, the designer who loves to talk to people, empathize with them, learn about their lived experiences, and feels deep satisfaction in creating something that elicits joy, will think deeper, work harder, and be more fulfilled by their work.
This isn’t to say that all product designers can’t achieve excellence or fulfillment without a love for humans, but without that deep empathy and joy from connection — that designer will find themselves leaning on teammates, data, researchers, and tools like personas to overcome challenges that human-loving product designers take for granted.
I understand that generationally, we’re living in a time of great anxiety and the potential risks and consequences of engaging in face-to-face conversation with strangers can feel impossible for some. Our platforms, culture, and politics have found ways to leverage, weaponize, and monetize our evolutionary nature to perceive differences, form tribes, and find reasons not to love our fellow humans. I also understand, however, that no widely-distributed product or platform has complete control over who uses it. If we can’t – or won’t – let ourselves take the scary, uncomfortable step of learning from and empathizing with a person who might be very different from us, then it’s so much more difficult for us to make a sincere effort to solve problems for that person. These culture and anxiety issues make the loving mindset even more valuable, and rare.
“Do you love humans?” is one of the first questions I ask of young people considering a career in product design. It doesn’t demand an answer on the spot, but if you’re being honest with yourself, you know the truth of whether you do or don’t. Love usually ends up being fairly durable over time, regardless of how much you enjoy the craft. It is, in my opinion, the single trait that can be the difference between good and great product designers, and a mindset that makes many aspects of the job easier and more enjoyable.
