I once helped facilitate a Design Sprint with a well-known financial brand, working as both the prototyper and co-facilitator. During the ideation phase, we asked the team to work individually, generating ideas and sketching possible solutions. One participant immediately began comparing himself to me. I was the designer in the room, after all, and he felt his lack of sketching ability put him at a disadvantage. He openly questioned whether he had anything worthwhile to contribute and nearly bowed out of the exercise.
He eventually decided to stay with the team and produce his batch of sketches. When we came back together and began voting on the ideas, something unexpected happened: his sketches started getting votes. In fact, they emerged as some of the strongest ideas in the room.
He wasn't the better designer
His sketches weren't winning because they demonstrated a mastery of visual design. They didn't. What made them compelling was his understanding of the customer and the problem we were trying to solve. He knew the customer, understood their pain point, and had a strong sense of what would actually help them.
That turned out to be far more valuable than the ability to draw a polished interface.This is one of the things I find most interesting about design work. We often associate good ideas with the people who are best at expressing them. But the quality of an idea and the quality of its presentation are two different things.
A rough sketch can contain an excellent idea. A beautiful presentation can contain a terrible one.The participant in that Sprint had almost disqualified himself before anyone else had the opportunity to evaluate his thinking.
The voice that gets there first
Most of us have some version of this voice. It shows up when we're asked to do something outside our perceived area of expertise. We see someone more experienced, more articulate, more creative, or more technically capable, and we begin comparing our work before we've even started.
The self-critic is particularly effective because it often sounds reasonable. I'm not a designer. I can't draw. I'm not technical. Someone else knows more about this than I do. Sometimes those statements are even true in a narrow sense. The problem comes when we turn them into conclusions about the value of our contribution.In a collaborative design process, expertise is distributed. The person closest to the customer may see something the designer doesn't. The engineer may recognize an opportunity nobody else considered. The person working in operations may understand a constraint that changes the entire solution.
If those people decide their ideas aren't worth expressing because they don't possess the same skills as the designer, the team loses access to information it may desperately need.
Design gives everyone permission to think
This is one reason I like the structure of a Design Sprint. The process deliberately creates a space where ideas can exist before they have to be polished.Everyone sketches. Everyone contributes. Everyone gets a chance to put something on the wall.The sketch isn't the finished product, it's a vehicle for communicating a thought.
That distinction matters because it lowers the stakes. You don't need to be an illustrator to sketch an idea. You don't need to be a writer to describe a concept. You don't need to be a product designer to recognize a problem that a product should solve.The goal is to get the thinking out of your head where it can be examined, combined, challenged, and improved.
Don't let yourself become the judge
The interesting thing about that Sprint participant is that nobody had to convince him that he was a great designer. He wasn't being asked to become one. He simply needed to stop judging the quality of his contribution before the team had a chance to see it.
That is a useful distinction for anyone working on difficult problems. Your job isn't always to produce the best idea immediately. Sometimes your job is simply to put an idea into the room.The team can decide what is valuable, the customer can tell you what matters, testing can tell you what works.You don't need to resolve all of that inside your own head before you participate.
