Before the Solution: Living design beyond tools and templates

Design is a deeply human capability, yet it is increasingly practised through tools, templates, and now AI. These can generate polished, method-first outputs at scale, but the risk is growing: work that looks right, yet lacks depth, character, and humanity. If you have ever felt your process is "correct" but your outcomes are interchangeable, you are not alone.
In Before the Solution, you will build the habits and rituals that make methods work. Written for (early-career)designers, design students, and useful to practitioners working in tool-heavy settings, the book helps you understand, practise, and explain what designers contribute beyond deliverables. You will strengthen the parts of practice you can train between projects: framing problems with intent, externalising thinking early, learning through reflective iteration, and working with others without losing direction, including when AI is in the room.
The distinctive move the book makes is simple: it invites you to look beyond the solution itself. Even without a brief in hand, you can still practise the parts of design that shape the quality of any outcome. Each chapter blends short narratives, distilled research from design cognition, and actionable exercises, supported by visual material you can return to as part of a routine. The aim is not to replace method handbooks. It is to strengthen the judgement behind them.
Written by Dr Morteza Pourmohamadi, an award-winning design educator at the University of Sydney (PhD in Design Computing and Cognition), with 20+ years of experience across academia and industry, the book recentres the uniquely human work of design: clarifying intent, negotiating trade-offs, building shared understanding, and making thoughtful choices under uncertainty.