Your products run for election every day and good design is critical to winning the campaign. — A.G. Lafley

Your products run for election every day and good design is critical to winning the campaign.

Author: A.G. Lafley

Insight: Every time someone opens your app, walks into your store, or uses something you made, they're essentially voting. They're deciding whether to stick around or leave. This isn't melodramatic—it's just how attention works in a world where alternatives are always one click away. Good design isn't about making things pretty; it's about making them work so smoothly that people feel relieved, not frustrated. The tricky part is that this election happens constantly and silently. You don't get one big moment to convince people. Instead, you're campaigning through a thousand small moments: the way a button responds, how quickly something loads, whether instructions make sense, or if the thing simply does what it promises. People won't always consciously notice good design, but they'll absolutely feel its absence. They'll feel the friction, the confusion, the broken promise. This reframes how you should think about improvement. You're not trying to wow people once; you're trying to earn their vote every single day through reliability and thoughtfulness. The products that win aren't the flashiest—they're the ones that respect your time and attention enough to get out of the way and just work.