How design helped me survive being a new parent

Design and diapers have more in common than you think.

So it begins

It was one of those rare New York nights where the “city that never sleeps” actually felt…asleep. Instead of the usual cacophony of car horns, sirens, and drunken laughs bouncing off the sidewalks, the city’s timbre had given way to a lulling calm. It was still early when my wife and I settled in for the night and the day quietly slipped away. Little did I know, I was on the verge of the most seismic change of my life.

My wife’s water broke at 2:30 a.m., and by 8:44 a.m. we were holding our daughter in our arms. For nine months, we had been mentally preparing for this moment and everything that would come with being first-time parents. But as any new parent will attest, no amount of book reading, nursery setup, or YouTube videos can truly prepare you for the reality that follows. I knew conceptually that we’d experience a dramatic change and be in uncharted territory, but living it was a far more visceral, intense, and (extremely) exhausting experience.

So here I am in week six, feeling the full spectrum of emotions: love, happiness, stress, anxiety, uncertainty…you name it. As a designer and creative at heart, I also had naively hoped I’d be able to steal away a few quiet moments during naps to make progress on projects and learning. But as I’m quickly finding out, things don’t often go according to plan as a new parent, and those still moments are few and far between.

However, that hasn’t stopped me from daydreaming. And when I do, there’s a funny little voice in the back of my head that’s been whispering, “Your design experience can help you become a better parent.”

Pffftt, yeah right, little voice!

But wait…what if it’s right?

What if on a whim I followed that idea and explored whether any lessons from the design process could actually help me survive being a new dad and help me get closer to my daughter in the process?

Well, it turns out I think they can. And even if this is nothing more than a fun mental exercise from an exhausted dad who misses using the creative side of his brain, here are a few lessons design has taught me in this new chapter of life (written while our baby sleeps strapped to a carrier on my chest).

Know your “user”

I’ve worn a lot of different hats over the years, and in each role I’ve found that every successful design starts with knowing your user’s needs. Without that as a foundation, design happens in a vacuum and it’s unclear if the right goals are being met.

There are lots of tools used to conduct user research and figure this out: interviews, surveys, diary studies, ethnographic research, and more. However, in this new paradigm, we have just one single “user”, and she is definitely not answering my interview questions or filling out a survey any time soon. In fact, I was having a hard time figuring out any of her needs, and that was pretty scary.

So like in design, I found it was best to approach things through a lens of empathy. Even if she couldn’t talk to me, I could put myself in her shoes (or footies, in this case) and try to understand her needs. Good design is about how someone experiences the world, so what was she experiencing? If I was just weeks old, I’d cry because I was hungry. Fuss because I was tired. Squirm because I was uncomfortable.

In the beginning, seeing her do these things was overwhelming. I felt like I couldn’t decipher her cues and was failing to be a good dad when she needed me most. But after shifting my mindset to, “If I were her, what would I be trying to say?” it helped ease my anxiety and made me better at meeting her where she was. I started to think of every cry, whimper, and facial expression as user feedback that helped me be the best I could be in those moments.

Like in design, I didn’t always have a perfect picture. This meant that occasionally I’d need to make assumptions about what her needs were. Sometimes I’d get it wrong, but each attempt taught me something new. Over time, those small learnings helped me build a better understanding of who she was and what she needed from me, just as I would when designing for users of a product.

Solving puzzles

One of my favorite parts of design is that it really feels like solving a puzzle. There could be hundreds of different solutions to a problem, and it’s the designer’s job to dig deep and determine which direction makes the most sense. For me, it’s even more exciting when things are a little ambiguous. That’s where creativity and experience really come into play. I approach those moments by forming a hypothesis, doing some rapid exploration, and iterating based on feedback and learning.

Our daughter’s routines were a tough puzzle to figure out. It often felt like something that worked yesterday no longer worked today. At this stage, newborns develop so rapidly that we often found ourselves reacting to changes rather than following any sort of reliable plan. But once again, design mapped perfectly to what we were going through as new parents. We started to get a bit more deliberate about the hypothesis > explore > iterate process, leading us to better results (aka, a happier baby).

For example, around week four, it became extremely difficult to put her down for her afternoon naps. She would cry and fight sleep, and we’d end up spending hours trying to soothe her until she finally dozed off (only to wake up 20 minutes later for her next feeding).

My wife was great at identifying the puzzle pieces we could adjust to remedy the situation. We suspected that long feeds and activity time were cutting into her next nap, so we approached it like a design problem: experimenting with different timings, tweaking and iterating until things finally started to click into place. Needless to say, things still changed from there, but using that design-inspired puzzle-solving framework has helped us hone in on new solutions when needed.

Teamwork makes the dream…survivable

Working as a team is certainly not design-specific. But in my job, I have the pleasure of working cross-functionally with smart and talented teams across design, product, engineering, business, marketing, and more. The best part is that I am constantly learning from them, and they help push me to be a better designer by collaborating across the full product development process. As a team, we fill in the gaps and support one another when needed.

Marriage before kids was already a team sport. But wow…in hindsight, those days felt like the minor leagues. Then our daughter arrived and suddenly we were playing in the majors.

The amount of collaboration, patience, and learning that comes with two people raising a child is staggering. As a pair, we’re both often sleep deprived, not eating enough, and barely taking care of ourselves. But even in that fog, we are responsible for this little human and have to support each other. This means that much like a good design team, constructive communication, collaboration, and organization really make all the difference.

For us, it started with discussing our roles. Of course there was flexibility, but with my wife recovering and constantly on-call nursing, I filled in the gaps with diaper changes, cooking, and cleaning (while we shared other sundry baby tasks). If one of us is drowning, we talk about it and make a plan to rebalance things.

It’s almost like we have an unofficial daily standup where we talk about the issues we’re facing that day. Maybe it’s a feeding challenge, a sleep setback, or one of us is just burnt out. At the end of the day, we regroup and talk about what worked, what didn’t, or even just…vent. During these little “new parent retrospectives,” it’s important for us to be open and transparent with each other, just like I would on a design team. This routine has helped us navigate some challenging days and become a stronger parenting team.

Permission to break the grid

Across my career, I’ve worked in the video game industry, app design, web development, graphic design, illustration, animation, and more. One of the things this varied experience has given me is the confidence to “break the grid”. While clean gutters, 8-point grids, and pixel-perfect symmetry are fantastic starting points, sometimes a designer needs to introduce something unexpected into a design to make it resonate and avoid feeling stale.

As we settled into routines with our newborn, sometimes it felt like the structure we used previously just wasn’t working anymore. The temptation was to cling to the plan because it felt safe and predictable. But much like design, we found some of our best breakthroughs by introducing some outside-the-box thinking.

In one case, our usual nap and soothing routine was failing miserably. Our daughter kept crying until she was purple in the face, and we were at our wit’s end. Then out of nowhere, I broke into a song my dad used to sing to me as a kid (it was an old Lithuanian children’s song my grandma used to sing to him). I put on a silly voice, gently swung her in the air, and she instantly quieted down. She stared at me with curious eyes, as if asking, “What is this strange new thing I’m hearing for the first time?”

It was a moment of surprise and delight, the same emotions I want to bring to the users of our products. It reminded me that structure and systems are important, but sometimes the best solutions come from trusting your instincts, trying something unexpected, and being willing to break the grid.

The work is never done

So what do you think? Can design thinking help us become better parents? I’d like to think so. Or at the very least, it can help someone like me from spiraling while navigating the challenges of raising a newborn.

If there’s one design-driven lesson I’ve taken from this experience, it’s to trust the process. In my career, I’ve never found an instant solution to a problem. It takes time, patience, iteration, listening, and feedback to uncover what actually works. There isn’t always a clear finish line, and the work is never truly done. We just do our best to use our experience to navigate those unknowns, and if we’re lucky, the people we’re designing for let us know we’re headed in the right direction.

There’s one piece of user feedback I’ve been anxiously awaiting from our daughter…her first real social smile. We finally got it today, and it completely melted my heart.

She still can’t speak, but I’ll go ahead and count that as a five-star review.

How design helped me survive being a new parent was originally published in Bootcamp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.