Design Quotes Series

This post is one in a series about quotes that influence my design practice. You can read more about it here: 0. Other people’s wisdom

”Sell your expertise and you have a limited repertoire. Sell your ignorance and you have an unlimited repertoire.”

— R. Saul Wurman

I think one of my defining qualities as a designer is that I am endlessly curious about how things, including people, work. It’s really helpful because a big part of our job is to help users understand something, and while there are many parts of the user’s lived experience we’ll never be able to internalize, we can know exactly what it’s like to learn how to do the thing they need to do.

This quote is actually Saul Wurman talking about Charles Eames, and it continues, “He was selling his ignorance and his desire to learn about a subject. The journey of not knowing to knowing was his work.”

I find this a really helpful idea because I can’t be an expert in everything (and think it would be really boring anyway), but I can learn how to do just about anything if I’m interested enough, which is what users are doing, too. In general, when I’m designing a product, my priorities are:

• Make it work the way users/customers would prefer it
• If that’s not possible, make it easy to use to satisfy their needs
• If that’s not possible, make it easy to understand how it works and why it is hard

In order to do that, I need to understand not just what the user wants but also what they need and how it would be accomplished. That’s the only way I can take them on the journey and ensure their needs are fulfilled.

While it’s tempting to say that we should always be able to overcome limitations and deliver on the users’ desires, it’s just not possible sometimes. Some users want things we can’t deliver. Delivering some experiences would far outweigh any commercial benefit. But, in the cases where we can’t give everyone everything they want, it can go a long way to be able to guide them from not knowing to knowing, and the best way to do that is to experience it yourself and design the thing you needed.