Design Skills: Trustworthiness
Trustworthiness is a skill that serves everyone well, both personally and professionally.
I believe it’s absolutely vital for Product Designers. Without it, you won’t get far.
Let me explain why.
If You’re Designing It Alone, You’re Doing It Wrong
The work of a product designer is inherently collaborative. That’s why I emphasize the importance of growing as a workshop facilitator. Every designer should be able to lead a group through the process of generating solutions and converging on the best ones. This requires organizing people around a common goal and guiding competing ideas until a good decision is made.
Here’s the thing: high-performing product teams do this constantly. Collaborative ideation and decision-making happen all the time across multiple projects because the ground under a product team’s feet constantly shifts as organizational priorities change and user understanding evolves.
Without establishing a high degree of trust with your collaborators, achieving outstanding results becomes nearly impossible.
Product designers play a big role in establishing a culture of trust through their collaborative processes.
So how can product designers truly be worthy of people’s trust?
Listen
As the primary representative of the user, it’s critical to strive to understand user problems better than anyone else. This requires a high degree of attentiveness. Designers must engage with every concern from every direction throughout a project.
There’s no room for dismissiveness. Always appreciate when someone expresses concern for the user’s experience.
Be a phenomenal listener and work hard to truly understand the problem space in front of you.
Don’t Hide
If you’re a visual thinker like me, you might sometimes make design decisions based on gut feeling. The first time you articulate a particular choice might be during a review with others.
You may discover mid-sentence that you’ve made an error in judgment. This has happened to me many times. Don’t feel embarrassed. The design review process exists to uncover these mistakes.
Own Your Mistakes
As a designer, you’re prone to error simply because you’re human. Experimentation and user testing help mitigate mistakes, but they still happen.
Here’s the thing: it’s good for your team to understand that you never operate with perfect knowledge. Be transparent about your level of certainty when discussing your project.
And when you make the wrong call, own up to it. Admit that what you thought was true didn’t end up being so. Then, move on quickly. Demonstrating ownership builds real trust with your team.
Be Dependable Over Time
As you advance in your career as a product designer, more will be asked of you. You might contribute to design systems in addition to your product work or cover multiple product teams at once.
One of the quickest ways to gain trust is to follow through on your commitments. If possible, deliver above and beyond expectations.
This might require you to be more deliberate about what you say yes to.
Two Key Relationships
You should work to build trust with everyone you work with, but the two best places to start are with the Product Manager you are teaming up with and your Design Manager. More than anyone else at your organization, you will likely work with these two individuals the most.
Having a trusting relationship with your PM and Design Manager will make it far easier to address concerns quickly.
Trustworthiness is the cornerstone of success for product designers, as it underpins effective collaboration, which is essential in this inherently team-driven role. By honing skills in listening, transparency, and dependability, designers can establish and maintain trust with their colleagues, especially with key figures like Product Managers and Design Managers. This trust allows teams to navigate the constant changes in organizational priorities and user needs, making it possible to consistently deliver outstanding results. Ultimately, the best product designers are those who not only excel in their craft but also foster a culture of trust, ownership, and open communication within their teams.