After spending close to two decades working with hundreds of designers, I found a few peculiar frustration points expressed by designers. These mainly revolve around evangelising design.
Evangelise word in the design context was popularised by Guy Kawasaki who was the chief design evangelist for Apple and many other companies. It broadly means influence, educate, advocate, and at times preach. It is about communicating your philosophy & ideologies to others.
So, the first and foremost thing about evangelising is, you got to love what you do and what you make. You can’t sell ideas, features, or user experience if you don’t have conviction. I realised that we designers live in a utopian world where everything should be nicely designed and in order. However, the real world doesn’t look or feel that way. So we land up cribbing, bitching, or condescending about the rest of the organization or the world.
I would like to give perspective of a designer’s mind and their top 5 frustrations points, their counter argument and few possible solutions; which if implemented can avoid the need to explicitly evangelise design in your company. Rather different stakeholders in the company will start valuing it and thereby creating a design-centric culture. So here are the 5 most common frustrations for designers that I have seen.
Frustration #1 “Nobody understands Design”
Counter argument
Why should others understand design? Were you a born designer? You spent a considerable amount of time learning and practicing design. How can you expect non-designer to understand design? Do you understand Excel or Java?
Solution - Educate
It’s your job to educate others if you want them to value what you do. Make it relatable to them. Educate your organization or your stakeholders about design. Here are a few quick ways to do it.
- Show case studies of companies doing better than yours.
- Organize small fun workshops dealing with design exercises like typography and more. Make them sensitive to a few aspects of design.
- Show examples of good design versus bad design. Impact of good design and bad design. Explain the impact on users, business, and other departments in the short run and long run
- Sometimes, it could mean, going a few miles ahead to build or prototype what they have not seen yet and help them visualize.
- Incase of research, surface quantitive and qualitative data, voice of customers in a digestible way with insights. Create quick take aways for stakeholders through which action can be taken.
Frustration #2 “Everybody wants options”
Counter argument
There are few pre-assumptions and myths about the word “Options” in design and I went asking myself these questions over and over again. Am I confused between iterations and options? When you are designing something, you are solving a problem. There could be multiple ways to solve it. Have you explored all possible solutions and approaches? Do you think your proposed solution is the ultimate solution? Do you think marketing budgets and sales pitches are made one shot? Do you think they don’t go through iterations?
Solution - Iterate
The key here is to iterate. Explore various ideas and approaches not to present or impress management but for your clarity of thought. Create variations internally so that you can defend your design decisions. Put forth the pros and cons of your design decisions when people ask for options. This can only happen if you have done your job in detail and dwelled over it multiple times. Options here don’t mean giving color options or different layout and copy options. That’s the last mile. The first few miles are exploring and self-criticizing your earlier iterations to defend your final solution. Making options is part of the job until you build credibility and ship stuff which has shown positive impact on some metrics.
Frustration #3 “Nobody listens to design”
Counter argument
Even I use to rant about this when I was a mid-level designer responsible for certain deliverables. But frankly, why should someone listen to design or you? How will that change things? Assume founders heard you. Now what? How will engineering, marketing, business, HR, sales, and finance all will listen to you? Above all, are you listening with an open mind? Are you open to feedback? Are you listening to them attentively?
Solution - Build credibility
Nobody is bound to listen to you. Designers are another cog in the wheel. Same as anybody else in the organization. If you want people to listen to you, give them value. Keep shipping small but best quality work. Don’t expect things to change overnight. Every shipping cycle is important. Once you have brought value to your users, your business, and your organization then things will fall in place. People will start listening because of your credibility and the value you bring to the table.
Frustration #4 “I don’t get enough time”
Counter argument
There are 2 sides to this argument.
- Improving the experience of a product or a service is an ongoing and ever-evolving process. With constant changes in technology, how can you estimate timelines?
- You will never get enough time to pixel-perfect every inch of the screen in this competitive environment. I remember watching, Zakhir Khan the standup comedian. He said, “Current trend is of mediocrity. I can give you an excellent script tomorrow” But the business says “I don’t want excellent, I want it now”.
Solution - Pick your battles
You can’t make everything flawless, fancy, and shiny. Pick your battles diligently keeping your core stakeholders in mind. Live by company values and product principles. Please note, you are here to aid business and not make a shiny portfolio.
Frustration #5 “Nobody cares about the design I create”
This is a fair ask, every person needs appreciation and gratification for their work. There is no counter argument still for this. 😉
Solution - Be objective
If you want people to care about your design, you have to care for your design. Here are a few ways to show how much you care.
- Demo your own designs. Feel proud of what you are making.
- Be open to feedback and keep your prejudices aside. Leave your ego aside.
- Whenever there are flags raised against your design solution, ask for constructive feedback
- Keep your solutions objective. Everything should be objective - backed by research and or data.
- Since you love what you do, share those learnings. Explain the complex process of making things simple. Blog about it.
I hope these tips, solutions and counter arguments help everyone become a more reliable and responsible designer.