It might feel like things are moving too slowly, and we are spending way too much time on the problem definition and user research.

I already quoted Albert Einstein saying “If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem, and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” We are still on the 55 minutes of thinking about the problem. 

It is very tempting to skip over this, open Sketch or Adobe XD and jump to designing a solution. Resist the temptation! Get into a habit of thinking about problems first! You will be a much better (and happier) designer.

There were too many instances in my own career where I failed to understand the problem at hand, and started working on wireframes and mocks only to discover that I was solving the wrong problem. I also find that failing to understand the problem before working out the designs is the most common mistake my junior team members are making. It is not something that comes naturally to most of us. Even now I have to remind myself to think about the problem before attempting to design anything.

There is a popular lightbulb joke that has many different permutations for different professions. For designers it goes like this:

Q: How many designers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Why a lightbulb?

It might not be particularly funny, but there is an element of truth in it that, I think, only designers can appreciate. I’ve been in way too many meetings when business people, technical people, and sometimes even designers, were talking about “changing a lightbulb” (changing the UI, adding more features, etc.), but very few actually asked a question “Why a lightbulb?”.

It might sound like a subtle shift in focus, but thinking in terms of problems as opposed to solutions opens floodgates of creative opportunities.

So we are still on 55 minutes… good news is, we are almost done.

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