What are the secrets to creating intuitive, efficient, and adaptable products as a designer?

What are the secrets to creating intuitive, efficient, and adaptable products as a designer? originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.

Answer by Alex Hood, Head of Product, Asana, on Quora:

This is the $100,000,000 question! There is a lifetime of building craft and product judgement that goes into creating an elegant solution. Here are a few thoughts:

Understand the pain before jumping to a solution. 

The worst products are solution first. The best solve a real unmet need for a customer and are designed by teams who have taken the time to get deep customer empathy. The best designers understand that their first few iterations might be sacrifices to learn more about the pain.

Review your solutions when you are the most tired. This is a great trick. If you are at your wits end when you take a look at your tool, it will highlight the friction and you’ll find places that you used to gloss over that annoy you at your ‘worst’. This heightens your sensitivity.

Lastly, be adaptable yourself. 

Solutions, thinking, and wireframes can’t be precious. They are tools to elicit info from your customer or to get your team’s best thinking by listening to their reaction. Force yourself to be humble and curious and act on the feedback you hear. Big egos don’t often make great products. Humility and adaptability is almost the definition of what works about the Lean Startup model (Eric Reis).
Source: forbes.com