The first thing you learn as a professional designer is how to walk in the shoes of others — techniques for making things that work well for people not like you, and building empathy for these people. In the real world, this involves an additional factor — balancing the problems people have, and identifying the important ones worth solving given the time and technical constraints you have.

We call this high level process of identifying problems and needs of people Product Design.

The product design role is one of finding problems, iterating on potential solutions, and refining toward one which we’ve identified as the «best», through testing, and user research, given our needs and constraints. It’s one of the coolest and most frustrating parts of design — you get to explore the craziest ideas and go completely broad, but you do need to balance your time, and not get personally attached to things that don’t work.

This is the process that explores the tangential, the lateral — it’s our attempt at systemizing disruption. It’s what produces things like iPhones and Macbooks, Polaroid cameras, Legos, and Coke bottles.

Chen Ye.