Design requires communication
Cameron linked over to D. “CMYK” Keith’s recent article on Tips for a better design review process, a topic on which I’ve been collecting thoughts to discuss here. The act of presenting, explaining, and defending your designs before stakeholders and customers should be a skill to be mastered by every great designer.
Design is communication. It requires it. Great designers should be excellent communicators, whether that be visual, oral, or written. Designers should dress well and accurately communicate with their personal presentation (which is our answer to Jason Fried’s question about suits). Designers’ homes and offices are often well designed and organized (tho painting kitchens Orange Toffee is questionable, Paul). The language and verbal presentation of a designer should also be refined and should communicate their message in a way that can be understood by that specific audience.
And the ability to stand in front of two or several dozen stakeholders and defend your design is one that is required anywhere design is critical (really anywhere you’re being paid for your design).
I recently experienced this in one of our biweekly prototype reviews, where new designs are presented and approved. Our designers are business analysts, visual designers, interaction designers, user researchers, information architects, and in this case, orators. I presented a section of the web application to a room of 20 or so top-level executives in one of the Church’s departments, and was tasked with explaining my design choices, defending those decisions, and mediating a roomful of helpful and not-so-helpful suggestions (sometimes from managers with little or no experience in that specific field).
Keith outlines good tips to becoming an excellent defender of design, and I’ll apply a couple of them to our work here:
- Know Your Stakeholders: This is key. Figure out who is in charge and who has been empowered to make decisions for the application or site. These few will have the ultimate say on increasing scope or for specific direction.
- Make Considered Design Decisions: I learned quickly working here that every design must be fully considered and have rationality. Be able to explain your work, and when you’re in the design process, imagine explaining it to 20 execs. This will also come in handy when your trusty developer comes to you with a “better” way to design that form control.
- Set Expectations / Ask For Specific Feedback: It is key with our group of stakeholders to continually explain the idea of prototypes, and to ask for and welcome feedback of all types. We’ve had a lot of success with this iterative design process of creating and approving prototypes before the work is programmed, and these reviews are key to that success.
- Be Prepared For The Phantom Stakeholder: I actually enjoy the stakeholder who comes into the room knowing nothing about the application or section. This keeps me on my toes and helps to see the app from an outsider’s point of view. Welcome these opportunities to defend even the most basic aspect of your design.
- Listen up!: This is perhaps the most important. Listen and repeat. Listen and repeat. And take notes. When people are giving you specific feedback and requests, they like to see that you’re noting it for later (even if you’ve adopted the 37signals model of reading them, throwing them away, and forgetting them).
And I’ll add one more to this list:
- Lead the horse to the water, but don’t drown him: Robbie “Balboa” Thomas taught me this a few weeks ago, and I’m sure I’ll write more on the subject later. We should make the horse want to drink so badly that he’s running down to the watering hole himself, salivating at the very thought of the water. Great designers know what direction the design should go. Stakeholders don’t always have that same vision. Instead of forcing that direction upon them and drowning the horse in the lake, communicate in a way that the customer wants that direction so badly that they’re begging you for it. You get bonus points if the horse walks away from the hole thinking it was their idea to drink.
Design reviews are a must! They will strengthen your design and give you the critical feedback to make your work truly useful and impactful. What’s more is you’ll gain a confidence in your work that is impossible to gain elsewhere. Welcome and embrace these chances to elicit feedback and use them as reasons to make sure every design decision is completely bulletproof.
With these tips in mind, head into your next review prepared to communicate. Your design, your hours of hard work, require it.