Change, "We make sure that products and communications in Wikimedia projects follow a proper design process" to "We make sure that products and communication in Wikimedia projects are well-designed."
Thanks for putting this out there.
Topic on Talk:Design/Statement of purpose
One more (I know you said you preferred no word smithing, but that's what I have right now). Use it if it works for you. If not, no problem. "Design at Wikimedia aims to make sharing human knowledge easy and joyful for everyone."
I think "easy and joyful" are actually good conceptual guidance. After I offered my first suggestion, I was reviewing my editing contributions and there is still so much information and so many portions of the interface that I don't yet get. Sure, I will slowly take the time to understand it over the years, but I still think it would be better if it were easier. Joyful never hurt either. That's why those concepts seem like good guidance to me.
Thanks for your input, @Annaproject.
I'm happy to hear that you consider "easy and joyful" to be a good conceptual guidance.
Regarding the word smithing, although we wanted to keep the discussion at a higher level, any change that helps making the text simpler is totally appreciated. So thanks for that too.
Regarding "follow a proper design process" vs. "products are well-designed", it depends on how much we want to put the focus on the result or the process.
The result ("well-designed products") is what ultimately better aligns with out goal. However, it may also e understood as our role being similar to an oracle or judge dictating what is or what is not well-designed. By emphasising the process ("follow a proper design process"), I think we emphasise the idea of helping teams in the path to get to those well-designed products (although that last part may be a bit implicit in the statement).