What is my design philosophy?

Its been about 7+ years in the Internet and Media industry. I've worked on so many different kinds of projects. Small websites to full featured applications. Yet I keep getting a question from peers "What is your design philosophy?".

Lets get some background information so you can relate to my career profile. I'm not educated in design, I've not been taught how to design, I've not been accredited by any institution in design! Yet I find my self doing what I do for the last 7 years. My passion in arts as a kid resonated into my decision to become a Graphic artist/Visual designer. That how I started my career!

Today I work as a User Experience Designer, blending the science of interactive media and user psychology with my skills in creative design. But that is vague right! I create usable interfaces and products that users will eventually use.

Now moving on to the philosophy. Well if your in this industry you've probably heard some of these words throw/phrases at you.

• Simple and intuitive design
• User hand holding
• Optimum real estate usage
• Inconsistent behavior
• Usability results
• Visual clutter
• Hidden or skewed information

The list goes on! Some you probably never heard because your calling it something else! But in essence what your shooting for is a set of guidelines or principles that you can use as the foundation for your design process.

I normally don't tag my design decision with a principle. For example, I try to make sure that in an application the entry path and exit path for a user's operation to search is consistent, creating a consistent experience. I don't call that out but I apply that process of thought when designing.

But the real question is how do you explain that you used that thought process when you started sketching designs? Some designs just work and you know applying that will solve the problem. Shouldn't your designs speak for them selves? Today there are so many successful interaction models for search that if you stray away too far, you can potentially create an painful experience.

Sometimes you work more out of instinct than from a hand book. Ideas and inspirations can resonate from a variety of places. But a big challenge is to paint a pretty picture of your design ideology.

A conventional design process has these basic stages:

• Ideation
• Design
  
• Iteration
• Construction

Every designer is going to see these stages but yet your expected to illustrate something more. It isn't sufficient to present the end result for each of these stages.

I think its more about the process involved between these stages than the stage itself. People want to know what did it take for you to move from Ideation to Design.
What was your interpretation of the requirement?
What did you feel was needed to draw that first line on the drawing board?
What changed from sketch 1 to sketch 2 to sketch 3?

That my friends gives a quantifiable reference to design principles! Unfortunately I've not been in the habit of documenting this process. But I think I'm going to.

Bottom line : I'm not deprived of design philosophy by any means, I just haven't been explaining it correctly!