Design Decisions

Cutting Cubes from Clouds: A framework for navigating ambiguity in complex design projects

Design Decisions is a framework I developed to help teams capture, organize, and use design project knowledge in support of decision-making on large, systemic design efforts. It grew out of years of working with design teams who struggled with making progress once projects became too complex to hold in any one person’s head.

I use the framework in both professional practice and graduate-level teaching to help teams reason together through uncertainty, revisit decisions intentionally, and move forward when divine inspiration is in short supply.

The Problem: So Many Decisions

Every design project involves an essentially infinite number of decisions—each made with wildly inadequate information. It can feel like flying a plane into a cloud bank with zero visibility, the instruments failing one by one. Even simple projects demand choices about goals, constraints, research, and which ideas to pursue, each decision nudging the work’s trajectory. Often, each team member develops a different mental model of the project—what's been learned, what matters, what should happen next. Without a shared point of view—everyone arrives at their own perfectly rational, but often conflicting, perspective on the way forward.

The Design Decisions Framework—Navigating Ambiguity in Design Practice

While the number of choices in any design effort can feel infinite, I believe there is a pattern: design decisions cluster into just four fundamental types. Those four types of decision became the foundation of the model I now use in practice and teach in my graduate courses in interaction design.

There’s a logical structure…

Each type of design decision sets the context for the next. When you have a sense of your goals, you can have a point of view on what you need to learn. When you’ve learned things, you need to understand what it means for your project. When your insights spark ideas, you need to nurture and develop those ideas. There’s a logical structure to the decisions.

But It’s Not a Linear Process

Project information rarely arrives so conveniently. New data, constraints, or insights can surface at any time—forcing teams to revisit earlier decisions. Design analysis might reveal insights that make you rethink the project definition. Late-stage prototype concepts might reveal gaps in the original research plan or project defintion.

From Individual Insight to Collective Intelligence

Design Decisions reflects my ongoing effort to demystify design work and make it more inclusive. Most designers navigate this ambiguity instinctively after years of practice. I believe that bringing a broader set of collaborators into the design process is essential if we’re going to take on larger and more complex challenges—and this framework is one way I’ve tried to support that shift.