Over the past few weeks, I got through all seven seasons of the Good Wife while adjusting to my sleepless reality of being a new dad. I chose the show to keep my mind mildly busy and to provide white noise, but I ended up being captivated by the show. It’s a legal and political drama series that revolves around lawyers working interesting cases. The show paints a comprehensive picture of what it’s like to be a lawyer and offers a behind-the-curtain look into the business of law. I initially dismissed much of the representations as fantastical T.V.-isms, but my lawyer friends attested to the show’s mostly-accurate portrayal of the legal world. It seems unlikely, but I started to see many parallels between lawyers and designers and between the business of law and the business of design. In this post, I wanted to share one common practice in law that I believe designers should adopt for their work to have a deeper impact and to help progress the industry forward. It’s the concept of setting and using precedents.
A precedent is a principle or rule established in a previous legal case that is used when deciding subsequent cases. You probably know a few famous ones. Roe v. Wade, Miranda v. Arizona, or Brown v. Board of Education probably sound familiar. These are Supreme Court cases, the verdicts of which have shaped the outcomes of many other cases after it.
As designers, we often need to gain alignment or buy-in from our company and clients for our designs. To do this, we need to build and present cases, which are always more persuasive and effective when there are preexisting models and case studies to reference. Of course, we can point to general best practices but that’s precisely the issue; they are generalities. Industry best practices are often not specific enough for the context of our daily work. Instead, we should consider laboring to set our own precedents for our sphere of influence. Below are five benefits of this concept for designers.
The posture of setting precedents helps you work smarter and more efficiently.
In an effort to fight the good fight for our users, we can end up waging war over every pixel. This will burn you out and degrade your relationships with clients and co-workers. Not everything can be or should be a precedent, so don’t spend your time and energy as if everything is important. Pinpoint the decisions that will touch the most people, have the biggest impact on the bottom line, and persist in the most places in your product(s). Those are the areas on which you should focus your attention, so you can use it as a communication prop and as a building block for the next thing.
I shared in previous posts about my come-to-Jesus moments with this idea. Like the time I wasted three days arguing for a design that ended up performing the same as the opposing design. You can read more about that in Guard the Principles, not the Pixels. I also shared about how my team used the design process to balance investor expectations and the company's strategic vision in Designers Should Follow the Money Trail.
Precedent is comfort food
My experience in product tells me that most people genuinely want to prioritize a good user experience, but it can seemingly conflict with a person's or company’s fiduciary responsibilities and other practical forces. The larger the company, the higher the risk aversion because there is potentially more at stake. Naturally, it’s easier and more comfortable to travel the beaten path.
Precedents, when weaved into your explanation of a new idea or a new direction for a project, help comfort the skeptic in your stakeholders/clients so that your ideas have a chance at being seriously considered.
Setting precedents develops continuity and consistency in your work
Setting and employing precedents require thoughtful consideration of the holistic impact of your work with the intention of building on it the next time. This develops continuity in the evolving theories and principles behind your design decisions. It also fosters consistency in your deliverables (i.e., within a product, amongst a suite of products, and devising a design system). This is especially important if you’re a part of an in-house team responsible for the life and evolution of the product. The benefit is two-pronged: (1) it provides your end users a better experience, and (2) it earns you credibility and trust from your constituents.
Precedents make your design work scalable
The value is in the economies of scale. One good case study can be shared and used over and over again, multiplying the impact of your work. For example, presenting to your client case studies of how usability tests improved the bottom line for other companies will make it easier to convince them to budget for testing. Or running a usability test to resolve a disagreement amongst stakeholders the first time may prevent a wasteful opinion war the next time. Building precedents pays dividends for your future work and as a contribution for others to use in their work.
And I'll wrap up with this last point...
The act of setting and using precedents cultivates patience and grit in your design career
We’ve now come full circle to my first point, that not everything can and should be a precedent. You need a substantial body of work to have amongst it some meaningful ones. It’s analogous to playing poker. You’ll have many hands, but not every hand will lead to winning a major pot. To win, it requires patience to wait for the right set of cards and the grit to make good strategic decisions for the full length of the game. Do it enough times and there will be plenty of moments and stories that can be referenced and shared as lessons for the next time.