Different High-level Designs

The more senior the designer, the more abstract the problem they should be solving.

Designer Lvl 1: Design a form that lets people edit their profile. Pretty scoped—assumes there is a profile, and that the solution takes the shape of a form.

Designer Lvl 2: _Design the best interface for users to edit their profile._The solution could be a form, could be a WYSIWYG inline editor, could be a modal window.

Designer Lvl 3 (broad): Design a system for editing across everything—profiles, posts, settings, etc. Now we’re not just profiles, but the editing system should be flexible enough to work across the entire app.

Designer Lvl 3 (deep): Design a way to get users to want to update their profiles. Here, the questions the designer is asking is why should users update their profile? And when? And how to best convey the value proposition?

Designer Lvl 4: Design a solution to increase the authenticity of users among your app. Maybe editing profiles isn’t even the right thing to focus on for our ultimate goal, maybe a peer-review system would be better.

Designer Lvl 5:Identify the biggest product problem with your app/company/site and design a solution. At the highest level, the best designers drive the vision for a product.

Note from The Looking Glass: Higher Level Design - by Julie Zhuo