The Fountain Institute is an independent online school that teaches advanced UX & product skills.
Are you stuck in the Delivery Trap?
Dear Reader,
You're working as a UX Designer, but something doesn't feel right.
There's never enough time to talk to customers. Instead of satisfying customer needs, you spend all of your time delivering on an endless backlog.
As time goes on, you get pushed further and further towards the end of projects. As the deadlines get shorter, the list of "required" screens grows.
You wonder if the only reason you have a job is that you know Figma, and your manager doesn't. You feel under-challenged and overworked.
What's happening here?
You, my friend, are stuck in the “Delivery Trap.”
— Don Norman
What is the Delivery Trap?
When designers are only judged by outputs and speed, that’s the Delivery Trap.
The Delivery Trap is a concept with many names:
- Product teams that become a “Feature Factory”
- The designer as the “Wireframe Monkey”
- Design as “Pixel Pushing”
- Products that fall into the “Build Trap”
Companies that put design in the Delivery Trap, appreciate design for the artifacts that it produces, not the problems it solves. They understand design from a UI level, but not the UX level.
These companies think that design is only a delivery phase, especially common in the agency world.
These companies may sell you on the idea of user-centered design but when the job starts, it's all about visuals and output...not customer outcomes.
Design should never be a phase of a project. It should be integral to the whole project.
— John Maeda
Design isn't gold plating you can add to the end of a project. Design isn’t a workshop you can run with your team.
It's an end-to-end process that turns customer insights into valuable experiences.
How do you escape the Delivery Trap?
The escape is all about discovery...
| Learn How to Escape the Delivery Trap |
Until next week!
Jeff Humble
Designer & Co-Founder
The Fountain Institute
P.S. We just announced the first free masterclass of 2023 on research operations called Unlock Your Team's Research Potential
The Fountain Institute
The Fountain Institute is an independent online school that teaches advanced UX & product skills.
Before The Fountain Institute, there was Art School Dropout By Hannah Baker Dear Reader, In spring 2020, when the world had just gone remote, we ran a tiny experiment called Art School Dropout. It wasn’t about UX or product design. We didn’t even know that’s where we’d end up focusing yet. It was about exploring the overlap between art and design, and figuring out how to make learning online feel human, creative, and social. We weren’t thinking about building a business yet. We were just...
Ready Beats Perfect (+ four habits from Hatch Conference) By Hannah Baker Dear Reader, Last week I had the pleasure of hosting the Dome Stage at Hatch, a design-leadership conference bringing product and UX folks together to share what’s working (and what isn’t). Q&A with Iris Latour, co-founder of THEFT Studio. Photos from Hatch Conference Photographers Rebecca ruetten, Indigo Lewisohn, Not because I’m fearless, but because I’d done two simple things: I prepped my intros for each speaker,...
10 Design Diagrams To Study Instead of Staring Into the Void by Jeff Humble Dear Reader, It's that time of the year. Another boring Q3 earnings call, and all you want is to go back to the beach. You look at yourself in Zoom, and all you see is a bottomless void. Hey. Stop that. Instead, check out some of the best Jeffing diagrams on the internet. At least you will look like you are kind of working... 1. Diverging and converging in action by Nicholas Frota Designers talk a lot about diverging...