35 years of product design wisdom from Apple, Disney, Pinterest, and beyond | Bob Baxley

1. Build Products with Moral Obligation

Recognize that every software interaction impacts users’ emotional energy; strive to create products that empower rather than frustrate, as a moral obligation to improve quality of life and reduce user confusion.

2. Prioritize Vision for Design Efficiency

Provide designers with clear, specific context and a shared philosophical understanding of the product and company vision to enable faster, more focused design work and reduce ambiguity.

3. Implement Decision-Making Design Tenets

Create 3-4 memorable design tenets (not generic principles) that act as clear decision-making tools for the entire team, helping to settle recurring debates and guide consistent product direction.

4. Integrate Design & Engineering Early

Connect design and engineering teams tightly from the beginning, involving ‘creative technologists’ who can sit with ambiguity, to ensure technical feasibility, foster buy-in, and build shared ownership.

5. Delay Visual Prototyping

Resist drawing high-fidelity prototypes too early, as the ‘primal mark’ can prematurely narrow possibilities; instead, explore concepts conversationally and with low-fidelity ‘block frames’ to allow for deeper, more original ideas.

6. Recognize Software’s Emotional Impact

Understand that software is a medium with an emotional component; consciously design to elicit desired emotions from users, rather than just focusing on tasks, to create more impactful products.

7. Recalibrate When Changing Cultures

When moving from one strong company culture to another, take time to recalibrate; hold onto core values but adapt behaviors to the new environment, as new places often hire for values, not specific past behaviors.

8. Observe Users in the Wild

Actively seek opportunities to watch ‘mere mortals’ use any software (not just your own product) in their natural state to develop intuition about human-computer interaction and avoid psychological biases.

9. Champion Ideas, Not Yourself

Advocate passionately for ideas you believe in, viewing it as promoting the idea’s success in the world rather than self-promotion, and have the courage of your convictions to fight for it.

10. Embrace Design as Holistic Mindset

View design as a holistic mindset of imagining a desired future and taking steps to make it real, rather than just a visual expression or a function, to foster intentionality across the company.

11. Small Teams for New Initiatives

Keep teams small and tight when starting something new to foster clarity of vision and collective genius (‘seniors’), scaling up only once the direction is clear.

12. Respect Functional Boundaries

Understand and respect the roles and boundaries between different functions (e.g., product, design, engineering), trusting each team to excel in their specific domain to foster collaboration and efficiency.

13. Understand Your Function’s Value

When seeking a new role, assess how important your specific function (e.g., design, engineering) is to the company’s founders and leadership, as working where your contribution is valued is crucial for job satisfaction.

14. Develop a Broad Company Vision

Founders should develop a clear company vision that extends beyond the current product, providing a guiding principle for growth, acquisitions, and overall strategic direction.

15. Use AI as a Life Coach

Use AI tools like ChatGPT as a ’life coach’ by asking specific questions (e.g., about blind spots, outdated mindsets) or engaging in structured daily questioning to reflect on and clarify personal thoughts and patterns.

16. Career is Not Your Life

Remember that your career is not your entire life; setbacks or ‘failures’ in a job do not define your overall well-being or destroy your career trajectory.