John Howrey
Design Leader
ContactCURRENTLY DigitalOcean
PREVIOUSLY SCAD
IBM
Skeptic
Philographica
Selbert Perkins Design
CASE STUDIES
Set Users Up for Success
Empowerment by Design
Driving Growth Through Design
All the World’s a Map
Luxury Reimagined
ABOUT Who I Am, What I Build
Philosophy of Leadership
wRITINGS We Don’t Need Another Framework
Design Leadership Is Cultural Leadership
Designers Should Own the Narrative
Speed and Substance Can Coexist
Collaboration Is the Work
Design as Stewardship of Experience


Speed and Substance Can Coexist

How to move fast without breaking the design—or the team.


“We didn’t really have time for design on this one.”

If you’ve worked on product teams for any length of time, you’ve heard that sentence. Usually delivered with a shrug. As if it’s a harmless truth, just part of how things go. But let’s call it what it is: a red flag.

Because when every project “doesn’t have time for design,” it’s not a scheduling issue.
It’s a values issue.

Design is being treated as optional. Disposable. A luxury you cut when things get tight.

And when that becomes normal—when every release is driven by engineering timelines, ticket queues, or infrastructure deadlines—design becomes ornamental at best, irrelevant at worst.

That’s not urgency. That’s organizational failure with a deadline.

“Fast or Good” Is a False Choice


Teams love binaries. Build or not. Ship or wait. Fast or good.

But in design, that binary is almost always false.
Speed and quality are not opposites.
Fast work can be good. Good work can be fast.

The real problem isn’t about speed. It’s about clarity.
Teams that are aligned, decisive, and well-scoped can move incredibly fast without sacrificing quality. The bottleneck is rarely design. It’s indecision. Vague ownership. Last-minute pivots. Strategy changes masquerading as urgency.

Design doesn’t slow things down—unclear priorities do.

Clarity Is the Fastest Tool You Have



Strong design brings clarity to the work. It gives decisions shape. It makes scope visible. It reveals tension before it turns into risk. It forces teams to name the real problem, and then it proposes a coherent way to solve it.

That clarity speeds up every downstream function—engineering estimates, product tradeoffs, QA testing, go-to-market strategy. It lets people act with confidence because they actually understand what they’re doing and why.

Good design is the opposite of delay. It’s momentum with direction.

Try this:
At your next kickoff, don’t lead with screens. Lead with stakes. Define the moment in the user’s life you’re trying to change. Then explain what happens if you get it wrong.
Suddenly “just ship it” doesn’t sound so strategic.

Craft Is Not the Enemy of Speed



Somewhere along the way, “craft” became shorthand for indulgence. Pixel-pushing. Preciousness.

But real craft is not slowness. It’s judgment.
It’s the ability to move quickly without compromising coherence or care. It’s knowing what matters, and when.

Designers with good craft don’t waste time perfecting everything. They focus on the moments that carry the most weight. They build flexible systems. They know where fidelity adds value and where it doesn’t.

Experienced designers are fast not because they’re cutting corners—but because they’ve built the instincts to skip the right ones.

Try this:
In critique, ask: “Where does the user feel this most?” Zoom in there. Let the rest carry that moment without distraction.

Process Isn’t the Problem. Bad Process Is.



When design gets cut for time, it’s often because the process around design feels bloated, bureaucratic, or slow.

And let’s be honest—sometimes it is.

Slide decks no one reads. Overlong Figma walkthroughs. Workshops that generate stickies but no decisions.

That’s not process. That’s performance.

The solution isn’t to kill process—it’s to design a better one. One that scales, invites participation, and moves at the speed of product.

Good process is lightweight, focused, and generous with clarity.

  • Live sessions instead of scattered async comments
  • Modular design systems that reduce repetition
  • Clear critique rituals that sharpen ideas instead of muddying them

Design doesn’t need less time. It needs a better engine.

Try this:
Map your current process. What creates clarity? What creates drag? What’s sacred, and what’s habit? If it doesn’t help the work move forward, redesign it—or cut it.

Urgency Without Integrity Becomes Damage



Urgency is good. It creates energy, focus, pace. But when urgency overrides design, it becomes something else: panic.

And panic is corrosive.
It produces rushed decisions. It sacrifices empathy. It introduces usability debt. It burns teams out and leaves users stranded.

But even worse, it reshapes the entire product in the image of the backend.

When design is sidelined, the experience becomes a reflection of the system—not the user.

You start designing for the database.
You prioritize what’s easy to query, not what’s meaningful to experience.
The interface becomes a visual schema—not a human solution.

You didn’t build an experience. You built an admin panel with lipstick.

That’s not speed. That’s surrender.

Call to Action


Try this tomorrow.

  • Start your next sprint planning by asking: “What is the most human moment in this experience? What deserves our attention?”
  • In your next stakeholder review, say: “This is the part that feels rushed. If we cut this corner, here’s what the user loses.” Make the tradeoff explicit.
  • In your next product launch, ask: “Does this design reflect urgency and intent?” If it doesn’t, it’s not ready.
 Speed is not the enemy. But speed without design is just motion. Design is not what slows you down. Design is what lets you move forward without losing your way.