When Henry Ford set out to create what became the Model T, he didn’t begin on the factory floor. He had an idea and a vision for a new, disruptive kind of transportation. So, he assembled a small team of engineers and designers in a humble Detroit workshop to carefully explore, prototype, and refine ideas. They spent months experimenting, iterating, and making mistakes until they created a car that wasn’t just functional, but also affordable, reliable, and transformative.
Only then, once the solution of the Model T was clearly understood and defined, did Ford introduce the famous moving assembly line, reducing the production time per unit to just ninety-three minutes. Ford intuitively grasped something that many designers and their leaders today overlook: there’s a crucial difference between the careful, thoughtful work of designing something and the fast, efficient work of manufacturing it. And, if you want to innovate, you need to understand these differences and treat them appropriately.
The Subtle Slide into the Manufacturing Mindset
Designers often face intense pressure to skip the costly time exploring ideas and jump directly to production by patching problems quickly rather than solving them deeply. This traps them in a manufacturing mindset, where speed and short-term productivity overshadow meaningful exploration. Designers are measured on projects completed, user flows maps, screens handed off, and keeping development teams busy.
But…is design really about productivity measured in production? Is that what will innovate? Is that what produces a competitive user experience?
To be fair, I’ve watched designers I deeply respect (and even myself) slip into production mode under pressure. Deadlines creep closer, stakeholders tap their feet impatiently, agile backlogs get locked in, and suddenly the designer shifts from problem-solver to churning out shallow solutions. But speed isn’t the real issue. You heard me right. Speed is not the issue. Design can happen fast. The issue is that somewhere in the rush, we lose the crucial element that distinguishes design from manufacturing.
Design isn’t about production. Design is about discovering fit between the problem and solution. And, designers discover fit by producing solutions to try out.
The difference might feel like semantics, but I assure you it’s not. In the midst of tight deadlines, when you have an option “that works”, why waste time? But ignoring the difference loses the value of design that so many businesses desperately want and need.
Manufacturing vs. Designing
What makes the practice of design unique? What makes a good designer distinct from someone who simply makes things? John Maeda provides a helpful distinction:
“A designer is someone who constructs while he or she thinks, someone for whom planning and making go together.”
Maeda shows an integration of thinking and making. Not just thoughtful making, but making and thinking going hand in hand. The act of making something is feedback for thought and critical evaluation. Designers make to understand. And if understanding is tied to making, then only making one solution leaves a designer’s understanding sorely uninformed.
A manufacturing mindset is very different. By the time a solution is on the manufacturing line, the problem has already been solved, a solution spec defined, individual parts have been created, and final assembly is underway. Notice the difference? There’s no need for understanding problems or exploring solutions because the solution is already defined.
Imagine going into your favorite clothing store, picking up a pair of jeans that look like they might fit. You try them on, and bingo, you have pants on. They “fit”, right? You might think so. But what happens if you try a size larger, or a size smaller, or a different cut? It’s likely you’ll find another pair of jeans that fits better. Suddenly that first pair doesn’t seem to fit as well as you thought. Why? Because you had something to compare it to. And it’s the same with designers. They test out different solutions to evaluate how well they fit.
This is why a manufacturing (or production) mindset is so crippling. If you enter into a design problem with a manufacturing mindset to produce only one possible (or the most obvious) solution, then you don’t really understand the problem. Why? Because you’ve only tested the shape of the problem with one possible fit. The “fit” is relative.
Manufacturing prioritizes speed, efficiency, and short-term results. Design prioritizes exploration, deliberate iteration, and discovery of the optimal fit for both users and business goals.
When designers function purely as manufacturers, they deliver solutions quickly through a straight-line path. But, those solutions rarely understand the problems that need to be solved. The symptoms may vanish briefly, but the root issues come back. This creates layers of complexity, accumulating over time into design debt and technical debt. Eventually, this debt demands repayment whether in the form of frustrated users, costly rework, downtrodden teams, or a litany of other issues.
Worse, consistently manufacturing short-term fixes points you (the designer) away from the innovative capabilities that make you valuable (or at least it used to be that way). It also trains stakeholders around you to expect superficial patching rather than thoughtful exploration that destroys the problem down to its roots. In the end, you solve fewer problems and discover fewer opportunities. It’s a race to mediocrity, even if it feels satisfying in the short term.
What should designers be known for?
If speedy production-line manufacturing isn’t the point of design, then what is? Remember what Maeda said? It’s about thinking and making together. It’s about making to understand. Bill Buxton puts it another way:
“A designer must have their head in the clouds and their feet in the mud.”
Strong designers blend visionary thinking with grounded practicality. They ask lofty questions like “What is the best possible approach for this?” Or, “What would the worst possible solution look like? And why?” But, they also respect the muddy constraints of the real world, knowing solutions must genuinely work in context. They have to be built into the existing world.
This intersection of vision and practicality is essential. Designers should never abandon visionary exploration, but neither can they ignore the limitations of the real-world. Entering a straight-line manufacturing mindset to create solutions sacrifices exploratory thinking, settling into a purely reactionary mode. Design requires holding the tension between idealism and practicality, using multiple solutions to explore what's optimal, not just what’s fastest or easiest.
Avoiding the Manufacturing Trap
So, how do we avoid this mindset trap? What can we do to prevent accidentally slipping into a production mindset? Here are a few ways to avoid slipping into manufacturing mode:
- Be intentional: Remember your role. You are a designer. Act like one. Everything you learn and create should be with intention toward the role of a designer. Ask yourself why you’re creating what you’re creating.
- Treat prototypes as questions, not answers: Prototypes are meant to provoke deeper questions, not immediately confirm assumptions. Use them to clarify your understanding. Ask why it’s working, and why it’s not.
- Always explore multiple possibilities: Never limit yourself to one idea prematurely. You can’t tell how good something is until you compare it with something else. Multiple paths often illuminate deeper insights. Ask yourself, how else could I solve this? What other solution might work better? What might work worse?
- Embrace curiosity over certainty: Design thrives on uncertainty and exploration. Design lives between understanding and creation. Lean into questions. Avoid landing on an answer too quickly (if you can). Ask yourself what you think you know well. Ask what’s missing in your understanding that might unlock an improved solution.
- Study design. There are some fantastic authors who’ve done great research on designers. Consider reading Design Thinking by Nigel Cross, Sketching User Experiences by Bill Buxton, and Creative Selection by Ken Kocienda. If you want to get better, then you’ll have to put in some learning and then practice.
These are just a few ideas. But, they are some helpful practices and actions that will help keep you on the right path. They’ll help reinforce your identity as a designer who thinks and plans not just someone who produces.
How Leaders Can Strength Design Practice
Designers alone can’t fix this issue. Leaders must also consciously choose to cultivate a design mindset:
- Clarify the value of design: Designers are best at creating understanding through creation. Reinforce a culture where designers’ ideas are valued and shared. Make clear that your team’s job is to discover optimal solutions, not just ship outputs. Work with partners to establish expectations on the value design can deliver and what’s truly needed to move forward with a solution.
- Require multiple options: When you interact with a designer’s work, always ask what other options they explored. If they haven’t, ask them to bring you 3-5 more options before you’ll discuss it with them. Create safe spaces where you can allow your designers to experiment freely without fear of criticism or penalty if they take thoughtful risks.
- Lead through uncertainty: Uncertainty is the breeding ground of innovation. Help your team embrace the uncertainty with a design mindset. Creation of multiple solutions allows us to test our understanding and reduce uncertainty. In recent years, the demand for data-driven decision-making has increased, providing the perfect opportunity for rapid data gathering.
- Adjust your success metrics: Exploration, highlight successes, and celebrate learning through creation. While it’s important to support partners and stakeholders, guard against speed and “screens handed off” as the measure of success (even though it can be important). Monitor product KPIs to measure the impact of what gets shipped. Measure satisfaction, retention, UXUM lite, and other metrics that show an optimal match between problems and solutions in the real world.
- Guard against design “elitism”: When a stakeholder chooses the “cheapest option”, or decides not to go with the “optimal solution”, resist the urge to overreact. Train your design team to accept decisions around them. The key is to clearly articulate the tradeoffs of the decision. Design isn’t “all or nothing”. Mentor your team through the difficulties of design-based relationships.
- Study design. Funny thing. Studying design is here for leaders too. If you want your team to get better, then you’ll have to put in some learning and practice. In addition to the authors above, you should look at books like The Right Kind of Crazy by Adam Steltzner, Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull, Switch by Chip and Dan Heath, and The Innovative Team by Grivas and Puccio.
When you lead by valuing the distinctness of design, designers will follow you to their true role: thoughtful exploration and understanding through creation rather than hurried production.
Embrace the True Nature of Design
Let’s revisit Henry Ford’s workshop again. What made the Model T revolutionary wasn’t the speed or efficiency of Ford’s famous assembly line. It wasn’t the rapid production. It was the value of the product he offered that came through thoughtful, deliberate exploration.
Ford’s team exemplified this integration of thought and action, of planning and construction. In fact, over 50 years later another team under the Ford Motor Company would do it again, and dominating LeMans multiple years in a row. These teams understood that you cannot manufacture your way into innovation. Instead, meaningful solutions emerge from patient exploration and creation used to understand the path forward.
Resist the impulse to quickly patch over symptoms, instead returning deliberately to the core of thoughtful problem-solving. Just like Ford, let your making refine your thinking. That is the essence of true design.