The misplaced creativeness of designers never fails to amaze. (Don Norman)

Just solve the problem! Honestly, people! What is wrong with you?

So, that’s what I want to say. What I typically say instead involves some lame hedging about standards, KISS, design patterns, never having tested that particular design before ...

Interestingly, this issue does often come up when a team is tasked with fixing something that came up in usability testing. And, in that context, my response is usually to compliment them on their effort but to point out that we won’t have to time to test their complete redesign of the system with just that one user coming in at 4:00 on Friday afternoon.

In other words, what you’ve come up with may solve the problem, but I can’t guarantee it. In fact, I honestly have no clue if it hasn’t introduced new problems. So, instead, I usually just try to get them to solve the problem, or – in Steve Krug’s great advice – to do the least possible to do so. And that is actually something I can feel pretty good about. 

Maybe it’s a digital creative thing. I know we are all encouraged to be innovative these days. And simply making an easy fix is probably not going to impress the higher ups or look good in your portfolio or make you feel all warm and tingly inside. If it solves the problem, though, why not just do it? You can then save all the creativity and innovation for something that really needs it.

Interestingly, Don’s quote was actually in the context of his famous doors. “Norman doors” are doors that are so poorly designed that they give you no affordance of whether to push or pull them. They were the example par excellence in his ground-breaking book The Psychology of Everyday Things, and have pretty much come to be the poster child for poor design. (“Norman Doors” would also be a great name for a band, by the way.)

Now, there are plenty of examples of “misplaced creativeness” in industrial design (where I guess doors would fall). Lately, though, I’ve been seeing lots and lots of examples of it in software, websites, and apps. And this is as functional a space as that for doors, and coffee pots, and stoves, and bathroom fixtures … and all the other real-world stuff Don liked to talk about. 

So, UX designers:  save the creativity for where it’s really needed. And if that means the print shop or potter’s wheel or woodworking shop that you hit only on the weekends, so be it! 

And then there’s this