Why Compromise Is the Great Design Superpower
The more important your work, the more trade-offs you have to make
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There are no perfect design outcomes. Real projects rarely end up looking like Dribbble shots. Designers are never satisfied with their work.
The perfectionist in me doesn’t want to admit it, but these are truths of digital design. Every design process is a series of compromises. Larger, more important, and meaningful projects often require greater compromises to get them across the line.
Compromising doesn’t mean shipping poor work you’re not proud of. It means delivering well-considered work that satisfies the needs of everyone involved.
Leave your ego at the door, please, and let’s talk about why compromise is the great superpower of design.
Compromise is more than working within constraints
Design, by definition, means problem-solving within constraints. Those constraints may be technical, budgetary, time-based, user-centered, business-driven, and based on any number of other factors.
Working within constraints isn’t a compromise because they were never up for negotiation.
Compromise means a trade-off between two competing needs. It means using new information to make course corrections rather than being unwilling or unable to adjust what you thought was best before.
Compromising doesn’t mean shipping poor work you’re not proud of. It means delivering well-considered work that satisfies the needs of everyone involved.
Each stakeholder in a design project can have their own agenda, and even when each of those agendas is valid, they don’t always align. This situation of misaligned needs is where compromise is valued most.
Great designers have the ability to assimilate even seemingly mutually exclusive needs, balance their strengths and weaknesses, and produce an optimal design solution that satisfies all of the project’s requirements as best as possible.
