One core property of all well-designed objects is that they fit around the abilities of their users – instead of demanding from their users to adjust to peculiarities of their own. They come in familiar shapes, speak well-known languages, and express predictable behaviours. Instead of forcing their users into learning how to approach them, well-designed objects adjust to the knowledge and skills that their users already have.

This is why online stores use the shopping basket metaphor even though there’s no basket involved (or even where a basket fundamentally couldn’t be involved – as in a gym app, where you can fill your basket with squash, circuits, or swimming pool splash sessions). They strive to be familiar. They look to fit around your experience and your knowledge instead of trying to force you into doing something they think is right.

If the why of designing an object is about providing a solution to a problem, the how is about efficient presentation of that solution through the look-and-feel of the deliverable. Finding a technically brilliant way to solve the problem is just one half of the answer. You still need to give your know-how a shape that will help it find a comfortable place in the users’ routines.

All the great deal of time that we spent planning, researching, and prototyping was only a mandatory first step. Now that we are happy with the technical performance of our product, we need to exercise the same level of effort to package it into a crystal-clear, friendly, and safe deliverable. A deliverable that our customers would want to use, would understand how to use, and would be capable of using frictionlessly, and in exact way that we expect them to.

The how is not that much about the physical qualities of the actual thing – its colour, or size, or weight, or material. Well, at some stage, it certainly is about physical qualities – with a red toaster being a red toaster and not a black motorcycle – but those qualities always come second. Those are means, but not the goal.

And the goal? It’s communication.

Every little aspect of the object that we are creating – its shape, its colour, its weight, the material it is made of, the name it goes by, the price it is sold at, the way it responds to the actions performed on it, – all serve one common goal: they articulate the purpose of the object to its users. Well-designed objects make their users perceive them without the need for any instruction manuals or training. They use their physical qualities to let intuition and experience of their users figure out what they are: what they do, why they do it, and what’s the right way to approach them. They communicate their purpose in all the ways available to them.

Best professionals in every industry know that smart, concise, efficient communication of purpose is what makes their products great. Yet, many of them have learned it in a hard way, having gone through multiple product failures before realizing its key role in product success. It is typical for professional education providers to focus on the core technologies of the industry but rarely on the soft skills that facilitate their efficient delivery, which makes underestimating the importance of communication a common blunder among new professionals.

Dismissing it is particularly wide-spread in novel, disruptive, knowledge-demanding industries – industries that are typically led by inventors, innovators, rocket scientists and other types of incredibly smart people. It is very common for smart people to fall victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect by underestimating how really smart they are comparing to others, and how large is the gap between their capabilities and those of an average Joe.

Ironically, to create great designs that speak for themselves you need to know how to be the average Joe. You need to learn to detach from your sky-high technology and approach your product from the position of someone down on the ground. No doubt, there’s a multitude of ground-breaking things happening up there, but none of them make any sense to a suburban lad looking to order pizza on a Friday night. The smartest team that lacks the capability to jump into that guy’s shoes will keep making superior products that can do superior things – but which require superior minds to operate them.

We’ve seen that evolution recently in software design. Early software applications were rather cumbersome and sometimes outright dangerous pieces of technology. They didn’t bother much about how they looked or what they wanted to communicate to their users. They had loads of windows with loads of boxes and buttons. Users had to undergo training to use them, which in some cases could last weeks or even months. They came with two-hundred-page instruction manuals, which users only read when they faced an issue that they approached five times and failed all five. Being either very restrictive or overly relaxed, they sent mixed messages to their users, often resulting in users inadvertently destroying sensitive stuff with a click of a button, or ending up calling helpdesk, struggling to figure their way around a straightforward function.

Steve Jobs was among the first who refused to view software as a tool for the chosen and started making software that focused on average humans. Others followed suit. Today, to compete in software market, your software not only must do its job right (it goes without saying) – it must also be friendly, accommodating, good-looking, and incredibly smart in recognizing the wants of its users.

Designing your deliverable so it clearly communicates itself is a crucial element of the SEQUENCE model. No single person can know everything. When we come across an object or process unknown to us, the first step we make is trying to understand how this object or process works. Well-designed objects help their users understand them quickly and accurately.

As we will see further, the role of communication is not limited to innovative products, such as cutting-edge devices, apps, or modern cars – or to commercially sold products at all. Effectively, communication is what happens between an object and its users. A road layout, a budget proposal, or even a dessert recipe can all therefore be viewed as rightful products with their own clusters of users, and so it is equally important that these objects communicate with them clearly as it is for a brand-new app. Furthermore, any interim designs, proposals, or even ideas that we create as part of our bigger ventures can also be viewed as products of their own. Communicating their what to their own clusters of users – our colleagues, reports, and managers, – is just as important.

Why is it that important? There are a few reasons.

First and foremost, the maker always knows more about their product than the user. In some cases, such as a birdbox, this knowledge gap is small. In others, such as a sophisticated dish or dessert recipe, it grows wider (unless you are a professional cook). Still in others – take a mobile phone or an automobile – it is tremendous. The bigger the gap is, the harder it is for the maker and the user to understand each other, and the more effort the maker needs to make to ensure that the users can use the object correctly and safely.

It is almost always easier for the maker to anticipate the best way of using their solution than it is for the users to figure that out by themselves. The vast knowledge that the maker possesses about the subject allows them to anticipate potential pitfalls, scenarios of unintended use, points of uncertainty, and likely side effects, and helps them make sure to integrate appropriate safeguards to the product on the design stage.

Then, there’s Occam’s razor. The majority of us human beings have a plateful of issues to deal with, right here, right now, even without your product in our life. Our lives are getting increasingly busy, and often we must work hard to accommodate our endless to do lists within a 24-hour day schedule.

The easier a solution that helps us solve our problem is, the less time we spend on using it, and the fewer resources of our brain it consumes, the more we like it. However big the problem is, we can certainly appreciate the vendor’s effort in helping us combat it, but not at expense of our own time. We don’t need to memorize Ohm’s law to enjoy electricity in our wall sockets, and we don’t want to delve into the detail that we reasonably do not need to successfully use a solution. Finally, there’s the good old physical appeal – something that is rooted deep in our biology. Objects and situations that we recognize as straightforward, harmonious and familiar create the atmosphere of safety and comfort. Objects that work hard to communicate their purpose to us in a friendly manner appeal much stronger to our subconscious than hostile-, awkward-, or even neutral-looking objects that just keep their distance. A friendly-looking object signals to our subconscious that it is unlikely to pose any danger to us, which brings down adrenaline and cortisol levels and boosts our confidence, thus increasing our chances of enjoying it even further.

For products that come with a risk of causing damage, injury, or death – which doesn’t need to be a complex technological structure such as a powerplant or bridge, but can be something as simple as a roundabout, lift, or even a pill box, – the role of establishing clear communication with its users becomes vital. For example, simple colour-coding of medication packages helped reduce confusion errors in elderly by two thirds: from 68% to 16%. That is a tale-telling example of how important the quality of communication can be.

You must be able to use the communication principle skilfully to make products that are lovable and safe. Just as a feeling or thought communicated carelessly to your friend or lover can severely affect your relationship, the product idea communicated poorly can make a fatal blow to the impression it makes upon its users. Few things are more frustrating than a product that solves a great problem, but that makes their users go through endless usability problems over and over. Ask any healthcare professional who is still forced by law to use a fax machine.

Remembering about the importance of the design’s communication role can expand your horizons and take your products to the next level of quality. Not only your users will enjoy your products more – but it will also help your products reach new heights in their safety, friendliness, and fun.

When you are communicating something to your wife/husband, your friend, or your colleague, you use all the tools available to you. The words you say, the tempo and pitch of your voice, your body language, your wit, all those metaphors, quotations and allegories – every single tool you use plays its own little role so that your counterpart could understand exactly what you meant to say.  

Learn to apply the same tools to your products. Let them tell a story. Make them interesting, make them intriguing, make them self-explaining – but also make them utterly honest and clear. Your customers will hesitate little to pay you back with their acceptance and loyalty.