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  "description": "There are times you must fast-forward the design process, but it always adds risk to your results. Here are three ways to use time to design well.",
  "path": "/the-design-power-of-time/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-04T12:40:23.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.designy.com",
  "tags": [
    "Apple Podcasts",
    "Spotify",
    "YouTube",
    "RSS.com for more...",
    "Become a guest on The Daily Sprint...",
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    "academy.designy.com",
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  "textContent": "<a href=\"https://rss.com/podcasts/the-daily-sprint/2791143/\">The Design Power of Time | RSS.com</a>\n\n_Subscribe on your favorite platform_\nApple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | RSS.com for more...\n\nBecome a guest on The Daily Sprint...\n\n* * *\n\n## Transcript\n\nWelcome to The Daily Sprint, where today is a great day to design.\n\nHere's your challenge.\n\nDo you ever want to fast forward the design process?\n\nThere's times you must, but often it's forced on us by deadlines.\n\nWe're going to discuss the ways designers miss out when they don't consider time when designing, and 3 ways you can use the power of time to improve your work.\n\nI'm Darrell Estabrook, the founder of designing, a platform for product designers, who want to design with a why.\n\nI coach designers into leaders through real-time interactive product specific guidance.\n\nFind out more and get on board with a free newsletter at designy.com\n\nWelcome.\n\nIt's episode 16.\n\nSweet indeed.\n\nWe're moving right along.\n\nSo have you ever thought you could skip parts of the design process in order to meet a deadline?\n\nYes, it's inevitable.\n\nWhere's always more design that needs to happen than there is time.\n\nThere's always more demands on our time than we can filter out.\n\nI don't know how many times I've tried all sorts of time management things, techniques, 20 minutes on and timers, and some of those things really work for people.\n\nSo that's great.\n\nBut I think overall, when we're talking about time, it's a real pressure and it really is something we want to force.\n\nIt forces us to make compromises in the design process that we probably shouldn't.\n\nI wonder if you feel like feeding all your requirements into AI will really help you fast forward and create a plan.\n\nAnd maybe you've simply just made assumptions and plowed ahead with your design.\n\nBut with all of that, there's one ingredient you can't escape, and that's the value of time.\n\nThere's a real power in using time as a design element.\n\nI'm not talking about animations or things like that.\n\nI'm talking about the process of creating something, taking the time it needs to see it through.\n\nThe reality is we are in a rush for everything.\n\nI think the whole AI scene that's come about has accelerated the need to make things faster, like just do it now, on demand.\n\nWe're trying to be creative on demand.\n\nAnd that's not really how creativity steeps, seeps.\n\nYeah, it's interesting.\n\nIt's this 2 edged sword, right?\n\nWe can move forward quickly.\n\nBut then are we pausing long enough to reflect on what just happened?\n\nAnd I think there's a lot of times we miss details when we rush.\n\nWhether using AI or not.\n\nIt really doesn't matter the tool.\n\nIt's really a mindset.\n\nAnd that's huge as a designer.\n\nWe're really here to facilitate the process of designing and not just be a button pushing, you know, plow it through.\n\nAnd sometimes that's how it feels, especially in business.\n\nSo time is really required for discovery.\n\nYou can't just pop it into your head.\n\nIt would be nice.\n\nInstant knowledge.\n\nIt's really not how we are made.\n\nWe're not made to know everything.\n\nWe are not omniscient.\n\nAnd this world was made to discover.\n\nWe are to find things and you have to go exploring.\n\nVirtually, even physically exploring to find out new stuff.\n\nAnd time is required for thinking.\n\nHow many times have you simply stopped?\n\nAnd thought.\n\nAnd really pondered.\n\nThis isn't mindless, um, clearing your mind or emptying your mind.\n\nWe'll talk about that in a bit, but really thinking through something without a digital device, thinking through maybe even going analog, like doing something different, just thinking, drinking a cup of tea and thinking.\n\nYeah it requires time to do that.\n\nAnd time is required to see results, right?\n\nWe want them right now.\n\nAgain, AI. Lets you see the results instantly.\n\nBut it's kind of a, I don't know, like a hydrated result in a lot of ways, especially when we're talking creativity.\n\nIt's like a gardener, right?\n\nYou plant the seed and you don't get tomatoes, if that's what you plant it, you don't get them immediately.\n\nYou can take a picture of it every day and at the end of 2 months, you can watch it and say, wow, look how fast that grew.\n\nBut you really won't get the results of it unless you go through time.\n\nAnd it's a good thing.\n\nThese are good things.\n\nBusiness kind of pushes against that because time is money is how they say, right.\n\nTime is advantage.\n\nTime can really make or break the success of something, decisions need to be made on time.\n\nBut we're going to discuss the ways designers miss out when they don't consider time.\n\nYou could really be short-changing yourself as a designer.\n\nAnd 3 ways that you can use this power of time to improve your work.\n\nSo, Before we run into all of that.\n\nI just want to clarify the design process.\n\nSo I've said design process.\n\nI'll mention it often.\n\nAnd there are so many design processes out there named, unnamed, specific, general, recent, old.\n\nWe've been around for a while.\n\nThere's so many of them.\n\nBut there's one that I've built an approach on over the past several years.\n\nAnd I'm calling it the designy framework, and it's very familiar to you pieces and parts.\n\nIt might even be something that you would say, oh, well, I already know that because I was maybe different labels on it.\n\nAnd that's okay.\n\nBut I think this is something that is really universal and you can't avoid it.\n\nSo take a look at this really quickly.\n\nThere's 5 aspects to it, and even though I'm showing it in order, kind of in order.\n\nIt's really, not just a linear process, but it's nonlinear.\n\nYou can jump back and forth as you're going through a specific design, but it's really important.\n\nThese things are always present in every design situation.\n\nIn fact, in everything possible to design, whether it's what we're doing is product design or architecture or strategy.\n\nSo just look at these.\n\nDefine purpose, discover context, create options, make choices, and measure results.\n\nSo you always need to have a purpose.\n\nSometimes it's clear, sometimes it's not.\n\nYou gotta you gotta get that straight.\n\nContext is that surrounding information that adds, it kind of puts a boundary on the sandbox of where you can play.\n\nCreating the options.\n\nWell, this is the thing that people want to jump straight to designers, you know, I know I love to open up the design program or if even if you're using AI prompt, you know, just jump right into it and let's just start creating stuff.\n\nIt's really fun.\n\nAnd if you've got a talent for it, you're you're loving it.\n\nYou're enjoying it.\n\nIt's great.\n\nBut you can't just jump right there.\n\nWe need the previous two.\n\nAnd then making choices, it's a very deliberate step that might just be flippant in some cases, but there's a real controlled way to do it.\n\nAnd then measure results.\n\nThis doesn't have to be a super formal research project, but it is something to do deliberately.\n\nAll these inform themselves.\n\nI've got a whole master class that goes through this, that you can take, we'll say more of that at the end.\n\nBut this process is something you will go through every time you design.\n\nYou'll encounter these every time you design.\n\nSo you can't avoid it, but you can ignore it, and that's the part.\n\nIf you ignore any one of these, you kind of short circuit the process and you'll end up with something less effective as far as your design.\n\nIt might cause more churn or spin.\n\nAnd all of that.\n\nSo, these are all necessary.\n\nBut what happens when we rush it, right?\n\nIf we skip ahead.\n\nSo some of these ways designers miss out when they don't consider time when designing.\n\nWe really, it kind of comes down to when you skip parts of the design process, you're forced to make an assumption.\n\nNow, assumptions are necessary.\n\nAgain, we're not omniscient.\n\nThat would be...\n\nI think if we were an omniscient, there's a whole other world of problems going on there.\n\nBut that's okay.\n\nAssumptions are necessary.\n\nBut how do you know you're assuming correctly?\n\nThere's always this other question that comes up, right?\n\nOkay, assumptions are good.\n\nGood assumptions are like you could consider your experience, right?\n\nIf you've done this a number of years or anything, right?\n\nIf you've gained experience, you can make a reasonable assumption.\n\nAnd that is invaluable.\n\nIn fact, that is storing up knowledge and and you don't have to always go to ground zero.\n\nYou have to start from blank.\n\nThat's good.\n\nThat's a natural occurring thing that happens with us.\n\nWe're made with a brain to remember things.\n\nAnd that sort of thing.\n\nSo good assumptions.\n\nThere are good assumptions.\n\nYou have to temper those with the bad assumptions.\n\nSo bad assumptions.\n\nIf you to fill in the blank with something arbitrary.\n\nIt's called guesswork.\n\nAnd guesswork happens to be not designing.\n\nBecause guessing is random and design is on purpose.\n\nIt just, it's just that's the way it is.\n\nYou can't break it down.\n\nSo bad assumptions.\n\nAnd you might say lucky guess in there, if the bad assumption turns out good or happy accident, we kind of, you know, work into some of those things.\n\nAnd those are what they are.\n\nWe're not going to try to weed those out per se.\n\nBut we want to know, we want to be aware that assumptions are floating around.\n\nAnd when we chop this out we're making assumptions.\n\nYou kind of think of it as with AI, right?\n\nIt's making assumptions.\n\nAnd a lot of times it'll present the results as complete, especially in this design process.\n\nI keep going back to that when we're talking about AI.\n\nBecause there's a lot that goes into it or needs to go into it.\n\nBecause AI will make mistakes.\n\nBut so do we, right?\n\nWe're making mistakes all the time.\n\nWe learn from them and we adapt and that's part of this process.\n\nThe other part of that is we have wisdom.\n\nAnd wisdom goes with that experience component and really makes the difference.\n\nAI doesn't have wisdom.\n\nSo, here are 33 actions you can take to really harness the power of time as you design.\n\nSo the 1st action, take the time for discovery.\n\nThe more you intake, the more context you have for making design decisions.\n\nSo like I mentioned, right, purpose, you need to understand the purpose of what you're doing, outcomes, there's a lot more into that one, but the context itself.\n\nIt's just so easy to make assumptions on context.\n\nIt's also easy to go light on context.\n\nTry to get summaries and things like that.\n\nYou know, you might not be the design expert or the domain expert in the product that you're designing, maybe not at first, especially if you're 1st hired, or if you're a consultant, right?\n\nYou may not be the expert.\n\nBut if you're curious, right, you have that drive of curiosity, you can become a pretty reliable design partner.\n\nAnd that's the biggest thing.\n\nYou don't, no one's asking you to become the subject matter expert, but if you seek out a subject matter expert, that's, that's their bread and butter.\n\nThey really want that, well, they've made their living around whatever the domain is.\n\nSo seek that person out, find them, make them your best friend in the project. And be the facilitator of design and really leverage them.\n\nAsk them questions, try to put yourself in their shoes, so to speak.\n\nAnd take the time for that discovery.\n\nYou can also do scrappy research.\n\nAnd that's down and dirty, not a formal research kind of thing.\n\nIt doesn't take long.\n\nInternet searches, reading, you know, PDF documents, that have been other books, things like that, anything that you can get your hands on in a short matter of time is scrappy.\n\nAnd that's a good thing.\n\nI kind of like to say in that, read firsthand information.\n\nRight?\n\nSo summaries are okay.\n\nI think you need, it's easy to get up to speed with a summary. Overview, that sort of thing.\n\nAI summaries and all that.\n\nBut it's not the same as understanding context.\n\nYou can ramp up, you can get the 10,000 foot view, you know, flyover.\n\nIt might help you know where to dig, you know, where to land.\n\nBut it takes time to read.\n\nIt doesn't have to be days, but you really can't accumulate meaningful knowledge in mere minutes.\n\nSo that's really the, you know, the tug of war there.\n\nTake the time for discovery.\n\nSo the 2nd action that you can use to leverage the power of time is use time away from your design to improve your work.\n\nIt's a little counterintuitive, right?\n\nI just need to apply more time to this work.\n\nBut that's not how we operate.\n\nIt's not how we kind of breathe as people.\n\nPlan some time to rest from designing.\n\nYou can take like an hour or maybe 2 hours or some amount of time away from your project.\n\nLike walk away, like literally, go do something else. Overnight, sometimes, how many times have I been staring at a design, working on it, or trying to solve a problem, anything like that, but especially the visual nature of it.\n\nAnd you either fall in love with what you're looking at, because you've designed it.\n\nYou know, just, I just loved what I did there.\n\nYay, me.\n\nAnd then you go to sleep, come back the next day and you're like, what was I thinking?\n\nOr, or it's like, oh, wow, that part of it is really good and now I see the weaknesses.\n\nAwesome all the time.\n\nIt resets your brain and you get to notice these details.\n\nSo it's really good to take some time resting from what you're doing.\n\nAnd then plan time to discuss the design, right?\n\nSo you're not designing.\n\nBut you're going to discuss it with, especially stakeholders.\n\nThis is something that you can do really quickly with them, 15 to 30 minute meetings.\n\nIf you do that every day.\n\nIt'd be a good touch point. Do a number of things.\n\nYou'd be able to, well, develop a relationship with a stakeholder.\n\nI get to know them better, even the subject matter expert, you know, who that is as a person.\n\nThat's a good thing, in order to review the design.\n\nAnd then it doesn't take a lot of their time. Which we'll talk about later.\n\nBut it takes you away from what you're doing long enough to see their perspective.\n\nSo same thing, like, you take some time away from your design, and you can see, you know, oh, wow, that's my perspective has changed.\n\nAnd then plan time to think about the design.\n\nSo this is kind of like coupled with that, taking some time away as well as discussing it.\n\nSometimes you actually need to think through what you're doing or the domain you're in without actually designing anything.\n\nSo you can get so into the technical moving stuff around or.\n\nChanging colors or comparing, you know, all the detail work that we do with the act of designing.\n\nBut this is where you like take a walk.\n\nLike the idea is that you're actually thinking about the problem, but you're not doing the activity to design.\n\nYou're really, you're processing it.\n\nSometimes this works really well with a mindless, I say mindless, but repetitive activity.\n\nSo it's something that you don't have to concentrate on.\n\nSo, like, I probably wouldn't suggest going and, um, creating architectural plans for, you know, a new shed in the back, like, not another creative activity, necessarily, but washing the dishes.\n\nRight?\n\nLike I said, take a walk.\n\nBuild something physical.\n\nLike something that would require action on your part, but you don't have to really plan or be precise with it.\n\nI used to do origami a whole lot, right?\n\nPaper folding, those paper cranes.\n\nI love that.\n\nAnd it's something that once you learn the folds and what has to happen with it, you could just kind of just keep folding the paper and just keep folding it.\n\nAnd you know what you're doing, but you're thinking about the problem, your mind kind of meander.\n\nAnd that's just good because now you're not trying to think of where to place the pixels.\n\nYou're not, you know, critiquing in real time, the design.\n\nIt just gets you, some freedom from just staring down the same hole of the problem.\n\nAnd the 3rd action that you can take delivered to power of design is to demonstrate the value of this time with stakeholders.\n\nSo I like to think of it as using stakeholder time wisely.\n\nThis is a general principle for anyone, really.\n\nWhen you use other people's time wisely, they trust you with more of it.\n\nAnd you get more of their attention.\n\nHow many times have you been in a meeting?\n\nWell, how many times have you had a meeting scheduled, that's an hour, hour and a half , something like that.\n\nAnd it's like, ugh.\n\nWhen are we gonna give, you're gonna, uh, your brain is gonna grind to a halt.\n\nIf you go into the meetings of such length or the flip side of it and someone, you know, has a half hour meeting and they run long, you know, without it being the natural, you know, cadence of it or asking, you know, kind of go a little longer, that sort of thing.\n\nYou know, people don't like that, right?\n\nNobody likes that.\n\nBut when you do it on purpose. 30 minute meeting, 30 minutes, I'm done.\n\nHour?\n\nI'm done, right?\n\n15 minutes?\n\nReally?\n\nIf you can do that, that's great.\n\nDon't schedule the huge meetings too.\n\nI find 15 minutes is really optimistic.\n\nIf it's a quick question.\n\nGreat.\n\nUh, you always say, can I have 15 minutes of your time?\n\nIt's not going to be 5 minutes.\n\nRarely, is it 5 minutes?\n\nHalf hour is a bit of a commitment.\n\nBut a half hour meeting is a legitimate thing, especially if you have a design to show, a very specific thing to show.\n\nThose are great because you're showing work.\n\nSo whatever you schedule, you got to be very precise and specific with what you're going to talk about.\n\nSo I like to think about it, like questions that are going to unblock you.\n\nThose are the most valuable for you and for them.\n\nAnd discuss it often.\n\nSo you're not just talking to the stakeholder and then not seeing them for a week or two.\n\nIt's kind of this formula.\n\nMaybe it's a formula.\n\nWe can write it out.\n\nIt would be good.\n\nShorter meetings, plus focus topics, times more often.\n\nSo you do that. Equals faster decisions and more effective designs.\n\nNice.\n\nAnd stakeholders see how you use this time, and then the result of the design.\n\nSo it's like, hey, I spent time with them, a very little amount of time, and wow, look at the progress we're making.\n\nAnd the influence I'm having, right, that starts to demonstrate this connection between time and design and that you are able to, say, control it, but you are using it well, like a good steward of a resource.\n\nThat's a really good thing.\n\nSo those are the 3 ways that you can use time and it's like a design superpower.\n\nI mean, designers have all these interactive traits that they can really leverage in the position you're in.\n\nSo take time for discovery.\n\nTake time to rest from your designing and use stakeholders time wisely.\n\nIt's a great thing.\n\nYou can maximize your daily sprint because today is the day.\n\nYou get to design.\n\nIt's not tomorrow, hasn't existed yet.\n\nIt's not there yet. Past is done.\n\nToday is your daily sprint.\n\nUse today's time wisely.\n\nAnd so I mentioned earlier, the designing framework, and all that's in that, how you really can't avoid it.\n\nBut I go really deep in that, in a masterclass that I've put up on designing academy.\n\nSo it's called design for value.\n\nAnd I go deep on each of those waypoints, but really, I, the goal of that is to show you the connection between purposeful design decisions and this framework and how you can connect that to stakeholders. Designing on purpose for value.\n\nRight now, there's 50% launch special through May 15th, 2026.\n\nSo go to academy.designy.com.\n\nAnd if your product designer and you've got some something to say about even time, like how do how have you managed time in your designs and leveraged it, I'd love to hear from you, I'd love you to be a guest on the daily sprint if you want to go that far.\n\nI've got a button on designey.com that says become a guest on the daily sprint.\n\nGo out, fill out that application, and if it's a match, it'll be great to have you on the podcast.\n\nAnd while you're there, sign up for the free newsletter, at least just stay in contact. Designy.com\n\nSo thanks for listening to the Daily Sprint.\n\nRemember, today is a great day to design with a why.\n\nSee you next time.",
  "title": "The Design Power of Time",
  "updatedAt": "2026-05-04T12:41:50.757Z"
}