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Recently at Draft

  • On Revise Weekly, this week we’re talking about how and when to ask for reviews after an order has been placed. Most designers don’t think about the appropriateness of following through on this important touchpoint, so we hope you take a look!
  • This week’s new blog post is about win-back campaigns in email. It’s a wildly unsexy topic, but it’s also one of the most valuable levers that value-based designers have to increase customer lifetime value.
  • I’m also on the Latitude podcast this week, talking about value-based design and independent business.

Set Intention

I’m going to keep talking about the beginning of the year, even though we’re already a month into it. If you read my letter a couple of weeks ago, you probably know that I have spent a lot of time stepping back from every part of my life to reassess my own intentions. I feel comfortable with the intentions I’ve set in my personal and business lives, and am dutifully working to put everything in motion as the weather gets warmer and people get more active.

But I’ve rarely discussed, at a very high level, what the whole point of my design practice is. I think it’s important to work with a fundamental purpose, as that provides the north star to guide my future actions. If I feel confused or adrift, I just ask myself if I’m fulfilling what I think my original purpose is around all of this – and then I do what I can to get back on track.

So, here are a few purposes that Draft has. I have rarely articulated these, because I think the business serves as an exemplar of each principle. Draft is a framework for manifesting and expressing these ideas, both in theory (with our books & courses) and in practice (with our consulting work).

First, there is intent behind every design decision, and our goal is to always read into that intent and make it legible to others. Like with any text or artwork, it’s hard to immediately understand the intent behind design decisions. And that intent might be more complicated than it seems on the surface, with many competing business interests or experiential tradeoffs. For over a decade, our books and consulting have tried to close-read design decisions to show how intent can translate in a technological capacity.

Second, businesses never do a good job of listening to their customers. Just as in real-life conversations, there’s a vast gulf between observing customers and listening to them. Listening is a process of understanding and actively reflecting back the customer’s needs. Meanwhile, most business owners think they know what’s best for their customers – when in fact they usually don’t. It’s good business to listen, and through our work we try to create a profitable, durable framework for doing so.

And finally, through these two processes, we try to get people to make more informed & profitable design decisions. The whole point of being an executive, product owner, or even a junior designer is to make good decisions. The more you know about the process behind making good design decisions, the more likely your decisions are going to materially benefit your business. What is that process, and how can you practice it? We have one that works for us, and we try to make it as widely practicable as we possibly can.

I don’t think these beliefs have changed for the entire history of my design practice. Even before I went independent 8 years ago, I believed that it was important to understand the intent behind decisions and make that legible to others. It’s important to be aware of these intentions, though, so Draft can figure out how to move going forward. What are yours?

Thanks for reading,
Nick Disabato


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