In software design, staying focused on the user’s problem is crucial. Keep it simple.
Two tools can help maintain this focus: Personas and User Journeys.
This focus ensures that the solutions you develop are relevant, effective, and truly helpful to the user.
Design Thinking workshops, when done properly, involve multiple stakeholders in thinking about the problem using these tools. As a designer, you can gather hours of feedback in just one session.
Ironically, great design thrives with limitations.
Even with APIs, which in REST are decoupled from the UI (headless), it’s important to use these guardrails to ensure the API is useful.
An API with too much information starts to resemble a database, which is not the goal. Keep it simple, and it will be useful.
With APIs, it’s much easier to add than subtract. Removing features is called a “breaking change,” which requires notifying all API consumers.
When the API serves a user and their jobs to be done, it becomes extremely valuable.
How do you know when the design is right? Test it with real users. If you don’t have time for that, build it and get feedback from them.
Keep your design focused by using Personas and User Journeys and it’s hard to go wrong.