You need an observation practice

In all my Design Juice interviews, curiosity keeps coming up. Of course, it’s not completely surprising, considering curiosity is a designer’s natural inclination. 

But these designers have pointed me to (and in some cases, told me outright) the same insight over and over: if you want to pursue truth, meet your client’s needs, have a portfolio that stands out, or meet a current cultural or political moment, you have to turn personal curiosity into an intentional observation practice.

I asked Jennifer Jerde, whose San Francisco-based studio, Elixir Design, has been around for 34 years, if she has an observation practice. “We do,” she said, after pondering for a moment. “I would never refer to it that way. We listen like crazy. We’re observing what lives inside clients’ minds and hearts.”

Her studio has sustained itself through its commitment to finding, as she calls it, “whatever’s really the truth” about a client. This means she’s serious about relationships and, as a result, keen observation.

For Ira Blossom, who founded the games-only analog newspaper, Sunday Club, observation is “the number one thing.” Blossom is a senior UX research manager at Google; after years of observing and documenting people using technology, he’s learned that customers want real time away from it. Sunday Club, which had a launch so overwhelmingly successful that even Blossom’s wife packaged over 50,000 copies herself, is a direct result of that insight. 

His advice: “don’t start solution-forward. Always start with understanding the problem and the real underlying thing that people are trying to solve.”

The kind of observation that brings good design work can, and actually often does, happen outside of the context of design. 

Graphic designer, art director, and mixed media artist Guillermo Flores Pacheco, whose distinctive style has landed him clients like Adobe, Apple, Nike, Sephora, and Marc Jacobs, says his style took years to refine. His artistic process is an observation practice in disguise. “I love to sit down in a coffee shop for hours and just watch everything. I’m doing some kind of research in my mind,” he says. “When someone asks me to create something, I directly go straight to those kinds of activities.”

Early on in his 40-year-long career, John Ball realized he needed to get serious about deep observation. 

He found himself in rooms, talking to clients about “big things,” and struck by the idea that he was woefully underprepared. “I had no idea how to be in that conversation,” he recounted. “I quickly realized, do I need to read the Wall Street Journal? Do I need to embrace what’s happening in the client’s world a little bit more, and step out of the design bubble?” Filling in the gaps with a deliberate information and experience diet outside the design field helped him become a more effective and empathetic thought partner. 

For any intentional practice to take root, it must be repeated — and typically recorded — which takes discipline, patience, and more than a little faith. An observation practice, as varied as its practitioner, builds on what designers understand but can easily forget: the world outside your immediate experience often holds the keys to better work.

But it will only work if it's intentional.

From John Ball: “As designers, we have many superpowers. Curiosity. A keen eye for the details. Taking in information and organizing it. Always questioning and looking for a better solution. These are the things we can lean into in pursuit of truth, whether for ourselves, our clients, or our society. Unfortunately, not everyone shares that same curiosity.”

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This edition of The Observatory was edited by Ellen McGirt.

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Consumer Product Innovation & Development Lead at Schroeder & Tremayne, Inc., St. Louis, MO.

Assistant Teaching Professor of Animation at University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS.

Senior Designer at Exit, Philadelphia, PA.