My first real design lesson was in middle school. For double my allowance one week, I was commissioned to create a sign for the nail salon that my mom purchased. She wanted a sign that will hang in front of the store while she finished renovating and installing new equipment so that it would build anticipation for the grand reopening. The sign would help attract new customers and encourage existing customers to stay. After researching what I should do, I designed a sign that said: “Under New Management”. The one in the picture is not the actual sign but it's similar. The design did not work.

The glaring misstep was the color choice because it posed serious readability issues. The less obvious but worse problem is that the sign did not convey any of the messages that I intended. In fact, it doesn't say anything meaningful or useful for the customer. Of course, the success of my mom's salon didn't depend on the effectiveness of my sign but it wasn't helpful either.

The sign did not convey any of the truly meaningful differentiators that might tip the customers decision into trying out the salon. The only thing that the sign makes clear is that the salon is under new management. Everything else is left to the imagination. It didn’t help that the awning was the same navy blue as before and that you had to peer through the display window to notice that my mom fully renovated the interior. You couldn't have guessed that my mom was more experienced than the previous owner as a business person and as a nail practitioner. In fact, she had a successful track record of opening, selling, and operating multiple salons. She had many loyal customers and she was one of the few practitioners who could handle the more technical nail procedures. I presumed the customers would understand what I was trying to say.

I blindly copied what other businesses were doing. I had no idea if the sign actually worked. The stores that I copied from probably - without thinking - copied from other stores as well. The domino effect likely made the sign a “best practice” by default. It's so pervasive that it's now grossly commoditized. You can find over 2,000 different versions of it on Amazon.

Knowing what I know now about business and user experience design, the lessons from that experience are clear and still applicable to my work today as a product designer:

Striving for parity with the market/competitors is generally a poor tactic and an even worse strategy. Ever consider that your competitors may be phasing out what you’re planning to implement? Or that they have an entirely different set of users and problems? What if they are waiting to see what you do? It’s worth investigating if what you’re planning to copy actually makes sense for your customer/end user. Always start with your problem and your use cases.
Applying a “best practice” blindly is a bad practice. When in doubt, find a way to test it. You should be confident that it will help your customer accomplish her goal.
Design isn't art. Design solves problems and the success of which can be measured. Good Design can be a major value-add to measurable business performance.