One thing I’ve learned in product design is that even a small change can have a much wider effect than it first appears it would have. Moving a button can change a flow and simplifying a form can affect the information another team receives. Sometimes adding a new component can create work across development, accessibility, the design system and future maintenance.
This became evident to me while working across both customer-facing products and internal operational tools. A change that made something easier for the customer could create more work behind the scenes, while designing too closely around internal processes could make the customer experience more difficult than it needed to be.
That changed the way I look at design decisions. I still ask whether something makes sense for the user, but I also think about what comes before and after it, who else depends on that information, whether something already exists that can solve part of the problem, and what that decision will mean once it reaches the development.
What I’ve found is that thinking about those connections earlier doesn’t make the work more complicated. Quite often, it does the opposite because it helps surface problems before they become part of the product.
That has probably been one of the bigger shifts in how I think about product design. I’m no longer looking at a screen as something that needs to work on its own, but as one part of a much larger product that other people, systems and decisions all depend on.
良いデザインは、画面の中だけで決まるものではないと思っています。
