The Role of UI Design

The role of design is to turn a vision into reality.

In rare cases, the role of design is to create a vision. However, usually designers work for business/product leaders who already have a vision. They have a rough sense of what they want to see in the world. And they want a designer to bring that concept out of their heads and into a lived experience in the world.

A designer will often be asked to step into shepherding a product that already exists. The initial vision for making The Thing a reality has been executed, and now the leader aims to grow The Thing into something more.

Depending on the leader and the product, the boundaries of what The Thing is may be more or less flexible. And, you may have more or less responsibility for playing with the boundaries of The Thing.

Making changes to the boundaries of The Thing might produce something altogether different than what was first conceived. Or it may produce an extension of The Thing expressed in multiple, various forms. In most cases, the designer is extending the The Thing in meaningful ways that make it The Thing but "more" – more useful, more usable, and more desirable.

The great strength of a designer is to be able to see the world for what it could be, explore how to create that reality through dozens or hundreds of divergent possibilities, and visualize the possibility which best balances the constraints at hand.

UI designers are deeply concerned with conceptual integrity.

Questions a designer might ask when evaluating the conceptual integrity include:

What is the the thing? What is it NOT? What are the boundaries of the thing? When does changing those boundaries result in a new thing? What changes might make the thing better?

Is it internally consistent? Does it follow the principles it has committed to? Or does it break those principles? And when it does, does it break them intentionally and meaningfully?

Are those principles too rigid or not rigid enough?