Think. Act. Feel.

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It's The Daily Sprint.

I'm Darrell Estabrook, you know the drill.

We're here to make sense of all the design, chaos, and design with a why.

Today we're talking about what drives your decision making.

Do you start with thinking or with feeling?

Each approach has different results.

It affects both your decision making and how you guide others to make decisions.

I'm also the founder of designing a platform for product designers who want to design with a why.

I coach designers into leaders through real-time interactive products specific guidance.

Find out more and get on board with a free newsletter at designy.com that's design with a “y” .com.

So glad you're here.

It's episode 12.

It's like an even dozen.

Like eggs.

So we're talking design with thinking versus feeling.

So I don't know if you've ever thought of that before.

We are all rational people as well as emotional people.

And a lot of times design, product design focuses all on the rational or very much on the emotional, depending on what you're doing, marketing, analytics, like it's all mixed.

We like to mix them together.

I think the ideal product is something that has taken both into account.

Because at the end of the day, there's a person using the software and they're going to be affected by these things.

We can't take away our emotions.

And we can't just think about everything in bits.

So there's something to that.

And I think the idea of thinking versus feeling, it's really, it's not one or the other, it's not really fixed.

I mean, you may just tend to think about things more or you might tend to feel things more.

There's all sorts of personality tests out there, to try to help you gauge, you know, what am I?

More thinking, more feeling.

And those are helpful maybe.

I don't know, to some degree.

You can't put all your stock in that because at the end of the day, you have to do something.

So, where does that fall?

So I think you're just trying to understand what your default tendency is.

And you'll follow that.

So that's kind of your natural inclination to think more, to feel more.

But it's advantageous to recognize which one your default is, and then work on the other one.

So that takes some intentional doing.

But I'd like to maybe back it up even further and think a little bit more about these 2 approaches.

And they're kind of phrased in a very memorable way.

So I kind of little play on words, but I think they set up a framework that when we're talking about design decisions, working with people helping them make design decisions, understanding where people are coming from, like all that stuff is part of the design designer job.

This might be really good.

So 2 different approaches to any situation.

Here you go.

Feel, act, think.

That's that's one flow of events.

The other one is think, act, feel.

So look, think about this in a bit.

Feel, act, think.

So that progression starts out with emotion, feel.

You feel something.

And that drives you to take an action.

And then you think about the consequences afterwards.

So, emotion, take an action, and then think, it's very reactionary, right?

And we'll talk about it a little bit more in a minute, the details on that.

The other one think, act, feel. Is where you consider the possible consequences of a decision.

Then you make a decision, and then you accept the feelings that result from that decision.

Hopefully they're positive, right?

It's more strategic. Think, act, feel.

So let's break these down because I think the 2 really play off of each other.

And notice act is in the middle.

So we're taking action, and that's like the core of the daily sprint, right?

We have this one day to work on our work, to live, exist, to provide an impact to people.

So we're acting unless you're in bed all day.

You're doing something.

So what are you doing, right?

So what drives those actions?

And then what are the results of it?

And, you know, reactionary results or strategic results.

So feel act, think.

Let's think of that one for a minute.

It's very common. Overall in life, right?

You think, feel like thing.

The 1st thing I think of is marketing.

I think of advertising.

If you've ever seen an ad, it's a lot of time structured in a way to evoke emotion.

You feel, you see the product and how desirable it is, and then you buy it.

And then you think about whether that was a good decision or not.

Right.

So there's a lot of that.

I mean it's everywhere.

You think of, devices, you know, whatever.

The marketing is not bad. Advertising is not bad, right?

You have to talk about the thing that you're doing, right?

But how is it pushed, right?

What is it highlighting?

And that's our default.

I think that's a human nature thing. Where we're very much emotional, our feelings are always changing, even through the course of the day.

I'm sure you could plot it.

I think there are apps out there.

You could plot out your emotions over the day.

And how much that helps you or not.

I don't know.

It could be just interesting.

I think, like, if you haven't eaten since breakfast.

You're probably feeling hungry, right?

That's not good or bad.

We all get hungry.

But that feeling is going to drive you to act. And eat something or maybe not eat something.

I't know, but eat something, right?

You're hungry, you eat something, and then you're not hungry afterwards, right?

The feeling went away.

And that's probably why they say don't shop on an empty stomach.

If you ever go to the grocery store hungry, everything looks good.

Even the Brussels sprouts.

Well, maybe not the Brussels sprouts.

I have to draw a line somewhere.

But here, you have a feeling.

And then you don't have a feeling.

So it's kind of like the basis of a decision is based on a feeling.

It can be very shaky.

Right?

So the pitfalls of kind of operating this way is that there's unintended consequences or it might not necessarily be unpredictable, but you might not want things to turn out a certain way if you just act on feelings.

Um, I am really hungry.

I see a king-sized candy bar.

I am going to eat 5 of them.

It's not unpredictable.

You'll have a sour stomach.

But you won't be hungry for a little bit.

Um, satisfying the hunger consequence was satisfied, you know, that accomplished, cha-ching, but unintended sickness and health issues afterwards.

Not what I want.

But I did it anyway.

You know, making these design decisions.

You know, we'll get into that too.

If we're going on feelings versus thinking out the outcomes.

I think when it comes to leading meetings, you know, when we talk about having an agenda for a meeting, I used to think that that was very formal and and stuffy.

But later on now, I think, oh, well, if we don't have a goal for why we're meeting, then what are we going to talk about?

And it could just end up being feeling feeling oriented.

There's so much talk about AI vibe coding.

I think that's like the epitome of feeling, acting, and then thinking.

There's no strategy.

Well, there's there is a reason you sat down and started prompting the AI, right?

You have an idea.

I want to create this thing.

But the idea of vibe coding this emotional pushing and pulling.

There's something to be said about it.

I think of a potter. And clay and you know, painting, you know, all these things that you start working on.

And then you kind of adjust your approach.

That's, you know, it's a thin line between.. Feeling and then exploring the design.

Yeah, those are those are very interesting.

But we're talking about if you're on the extreme, right?

That's our default, we don't want to always just be reactionary because the designs are going to be unpredictable.

And just regretting the actions when they don't result in something predictable or desirable, right?

It's, You can hope all day that things will turn out a certain way, even despite actions which would prove otherwise, and then be disappointed.

So just because you want something to happen doesn't mean it will happen and where it's predictable or understandable, then it doesn't start to make sense why to start with feeling things.

But you can recognize this sort of approach when you sense that there's nothing objective that we're talking about, like this agenda in the meeting, or even the feature, uh, if we're, if there's no outcome identified, whether it's stated this is the outcome or not.

If there's no, if there's nothing we're pushing towards, then that could be a little signal.

Hey, we might just be feeling out this feature.

We really want this feature to turn out a certain way.

But there's no basis for it to turn out that way.

So we need to get down to an outcome.

If you start to notice a swirl of conversation, right?

It's, I've described it as a balloon, like one of those long balloons as partially filled up and you squeeze one end of it and all the air pushes to the other side and then you let go and you squeeze on the other side of the balloon and the air goes to the other side.

It's like, we're not actually filling up the balloon anymore.

We're moving the air around.

So conversations can happen that way too.

So you start to detect a swirl.

It might be a clue.

Hey, we're feeling instead of thinking.

First, right?

And this idea of outcome or goal or future, the idea that there's no long term why that's been defined, except for the moment, or the release, or the short term, you know, we got to get this feature out quickly.

You know, those things start to be the reaction result.

We've got a user that's complaining about this thing.

Let's go fix it.

Like that's feeling versus thinking.

There's nothing wrong with addressing those issues.

People are always going to have insight into what's happening in the product, but then what do you do with it?

So that kind of follows that idea, right?

So feel, act, think.

And we really, that shouldn't be the default, right?

Feelings aren't bad.

We're going to talk about that right here.

But we want to flip it, right?

So think, act, feel.

Now, if feelings are default, then thinking is not our default, that's a way to approach it.

So that means we have to intentionally think we have to take some purposing in our hearts to say, hey, this is important.

I need a retool.

We need to engage thinking first.

And that takes a bit of overriding this default, emotional instinct.

It's just, you know, reaction.

We want to react.

We want to help people with those features that are broken, right?

It's not bad.

That's a really good thing.

But to pause and start to think about the implications of that is really good.

So that means you have to be aware that it's happening, that we're feeling 1st.

We have to kind of pause.

And it takes time to reflect, right?

Thinking is not necessarily instantaneous.

Now, there are those who, either through talent or experience, can assess a situation and think through the consequences and produce a strategy in very short order, and depending on how complex it is, it could be in the moment even.

And that's awesome.

That's like something to a strive for to achieve.

I want to be that.

And I've seen that.

I've been able to do that in some cases in some expertise, you know, areas.

I think those that you have practiced in over the years.

You may also have that ability.

That's great.

How can we expand that so that it becomes more of the norm?

Right?

But taking time to reflect.

It might be something where there's a phone call.

The emotion happens. Let's instead of making a decision right then.

It's like, hey, let's let me get back to you in an hour.

Let me get back to you tomorrow.

That's a way to put a little, you know, pump the brakes, as they say.

Does anyone pump breaks anymore?

I don't think so.

But you're right?

Put a little put a little halt on that.

But there's a great upside to thinking 1st and and then acting, right?

The objective nature of making a decision really comes to bear.

So there's reasons for decisions.

Someone can say, hey, why did you do it that way?

Why did you design this screen in a certain way?

You will have an answer for every aspect of what you did.

It's one of the things that's really difficult with AI generated screens is you don't know why it's there.

There might be some explanation and things like that.

And that's a deeper topic, but without being able to truly understand the thinking, it's very hard to understand if the outcome will be what we intend.

Right?

When you think first.

You're considering the consequences.

And those are good consequences aren't good or bad either, right?

They're just the result of a decision.

We think of bad consequences, like I ate 5 king-sized candy bars, not good.

The consequence of immediately eating it might be awesome, right?

But that's not where it stops.

So, considering the consequences is very beneficial design consequences, right?

If we stop to fix this feature for this user, have we really made an impact to all the users or by fixing it?

Are we breaking something else?

Are we going to cause other workflows to fall apart because of this one fix?

Or does this one fix suddenly make other features more complicated?

Lots of things to consider?

But the flip side of that, though, is you can plan for exceptions.

Because when you're thinking, and you're thinking of those consequences, you're like, okay, well, there's a lot that's good in this, except for these bits.

So let's design for that.

Let's let's cut off the feature at that point or let's go forward, but we're going to have to design a few extra contingencies in order to not have it all fall apart.

So that's really good.

And when you're when you're thinking first, you're actually stepping into a leadership position of directing and not reacting.

And directing is a really fun position to be in.

It's like the orchestra conductor, right?

Directing all the instruments, you know, when to come in for this section, you know, instrument, when to fade out, when to stop, when to start.

And then all of these other actions are happening in sequence, when they're supposed to.

And you've got a very broad view.

It's very systems way of thinking when you're directing.

But when you're reacting, you're just whack-a-mole.

It like, ooh, problem there, solve, smash.

Oh, another problem.

Squeeze the balloon.

Yeah, all these things.

So yeah, so to think 1st is really to direct.

And that naturally leads to more control, which is good control in the sense of knowing where everything is.

It's leadership.

It's showing a path forward and being able to go there.

And that just doesn't happen on its own.

So where do we see this in everyday stuff?

Well, you know, when you design for outcomes, You know, and you're designing for value.

That's the biggest part.

Value is a thing we like to think about as a umbrella idea.

We have a valuable product, but we can do it on purpose.

We can actually design something that generates value to users value, that they could actually, I like using this app because it helps me actually get something done. Value to the engineers.

They, wow, this is scalable.

This is something that's, uh, kind of lower our maintenance costs and help us build faster, value for the stakeholders who want to see the product grow.

More people use it, benefit from it.

And I think even in the granular everyday thing, when we're thinking 1st, these design reviews go much better.

They're not feeling based.

Like, I like it, I don't like it.

They're really objectively looking at the outcome and say, oh, see, these elements here, they help achieve this outcome or these seem to have this trade-off that's very valuable.

There's some other things we may have to, you know, work on or consider.

We really have a healthy conversation and design reviews.

I love design reviews because you can actually have that conversation if you know how to lead it.

And you can switch, right?

Well, you talked a little bit earlier about feeling to thinking.

How do you do that?

Well, if things are emotional, right?

First, that's the stop, you know, yellow flag.

If you have a tight deadlines looming.

That's probably going to be very emotional or really lead to feeling first.

But that's a thing, that's a moment to pause and say, ooh, let's back it up a minute.

Maybe it literally is a minute.

We're not talking about a lot of weeks later to think about it.

No, it's just a matter of pausing.

So how can you think, act, and feel in your everyday work?

Well, we've gone through a number of kind of approaches already, but just thinking 1st requires time and consideration.

So you do need to do that.

You need to say, hey, I'm going to take 5 minutes and think about this or, right, some time period to do it.

Define your intended outcome.

I've got a whole course on making vague requirements clear.

That's a thing.

It doesn't take a lot of time, but it does take consideration.

And put your emotions in their place.

They are valuable, but not for driving outcome related design decisions.

So they'll come with me in.

Limit your actions to those focused on the outcome.

And there's a lot to do.

So limit sounds like, oh, I can't do anything.

No, no, it's really focus is what that brings.

And then the action, right?

Action with courage is required.

I think sometimes it will take courage to take certain actions, especially if there's uncertainty with the decision, the thinking part, but that's good.

We're our designers.

We like to test things out.

Well, let's let's test.

Let's put our designs out in front of people.

And that might take courage at early stages or, you know, different types of projects.

But it's done deliberately, right?

This is not an action, that's a reaction.

It's an action. Done on purpose.

And you have an expectation of the result when you do it as opposed to, ooh, I don't know.

I don't know what's gonna happen.

And the feeling, the feeling.

When you start with thinking first, the feeling is the reward, not the cause.

So after you thought you've acted, you can look back on the action and assess the results, right?

That's, it's a resting in the feeling of accomplishment.

And there may be other feelings that come out of it, but it's the reward, right?

It's the result.

It's not what's driving you.

So think, act, and then feel, and see how that improves your everyday design work.

So I'd love for you to get more involved, especially with designy or the daily sprint.

And if you have been in product design for a while, just getting started, if you've learned something along the way of thinking, acting, feeling, or feeling acting, thinking that's really changed your perspective on product design and how you approach it, I'd love to talk to you.

I'd love to bring you on the show, and you can become a guest on the daily sprint.

So you could go to designy.com, and I have a form on there.

If you scroll to the bottom of any page, there is a form, become a guest on the daily sprint.

So you can go there and read more about it.

An application is there.

Love to just get to know you a little bit more and see if it's a fit, then we can go down that path and see what we might talk about on the podcast.

And speaking of the podcast.

Would you share this link to the daily sprint with fellow product designer, someone you know?

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Remember, today is a great day to design with a why.

See you next time.