Thread by @intercomdesign

One of the product design principles we have at Intercom is “What you ship is what matters“.

But what do you ship?

Thread 👇

It’s a fundamental question that every product designer needs to ask themselves.

There are three potential answers:
👉 I ship design
👉 I ship product
👉 I ship business

Designers who say that they ship design might often feel frustrated. In a lot of cases it seems like all other disciplines are working against them. Engineers don’t care about pixel perfection, product managers always present them with business constraints and so on.

“Oh, these people just don’t understand how important good design is!” one would say.

Designers who say that they ship a product understand that design is just one of the ingredients. It’s neither more nor less important than great engineering, great marketing, great sales, great research or great product management.

Shipping a good product is a constant balancing act between different constraints and limitations of the real world. Designers who ship product understand that design doesn’t exist in the vacuum.

Designers who say that they ship business understand that great design and great product are important, but there are businesses that succeed without those two being great.

As @destraynor keeps saying:

“A mediocre product can win big in a great market. A great product can lose in a bad market. Market always wins.”

That being said we do strongly believe in the importance of great design at @intercom. But sweating out the details of design craft is as important as managing one’s expectations. Having the right expectations from beginning only makes the design stronger.

P.S. You should also check out this talk that our very own @padday has given at @UXLondon 2018 intercom.com/blog/the-end-o…