Designing a Workflow for the New Normal
2020: well what can I say that hasn’t already been said. To say 2020 has been one hell of a ride would be an understatement. It has rung us through the proverbial washing machine. We are uncomfortable, we are uncertain and quite literally we are left sitting in our makeshift WFH setups dumbfounded as to how rapidly the world changes within the blink of a pandemic. But one thing is for certain: The only constant in life is change. We may kick and scream when it comes about, but it’s coming whether we like it or not.
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”
(Disclaimer up front: we are in no way facing the challenges that the front line workers are facing so just a huge shout out to them, the real MVPs) As a designer in a consultancy team, I spend a lot of time thinking how this new normal would affect my colleagues and I. We now have to navigate remote working environments, the shifted balance of work culture and the ever increasing need for team trust. Collaboration is no longer a choice, it is a necessity and our designer egos need to be left at the Zoom lobby door. Deadlines are now shorter with an increased pressure to deliver and the need to rapidly test and prototype new ideas for changing business models. We as employees are having to up-skill at an insane rate to remain relevant.
But to quote Simon Sinek, “These are not unprecedented times”. We’ve seen huge change… perhaps at a more languid pace yes, but huge change nonetheless that has propelled the most innovative shifts in human thinking and ways of working. The only question we are left with is how do we move with this ebb and flow of change rather than resist it? Designers can be very precious with their workflows and very resistant to change, myself included. Before the pandemic began I was forced to use Figma. As an ardent Sketch lover, I had a hard time coming to grips with Frames and Components. Where was my symbols page? Why were styles so different? I was uncomfortable but out of my discomfort came opportunity. I was learning a new tool, and unlearning my traditional mindset. 2020 was my Mr Miyagi. Wax-on wax-off.
After some time my creative director asked me to report back to the team on the benefits of using Figma. As I was working on the presentation, a colleague of mine recommended to shift the lens from the tool to the challenges of 2020 and whether or not Figma was indeed the right tool to use,
So here’s to the new normal
My Product Design Challenges for 2020
From Scattered Local Files to a Single Source of Truth.
Gone are the days of localised files and getting lost between the latest versions etc 2020 is the year of rapid design, rapid prototyping and rapid communication. The year where co-designing and co-critiquing are tantamount to product success. Down with design elitism and preciousness. Let’s include the copy writers, the dev team, the client, the PMs, the whole shebang in our design process. Better collaboration means we end up building the right things for the right people. If all the right people are involved from the start, the better the product will be. And as for the client: 2020 is the year of involving them more often and sooner. Let’s do away with the mentality that the client doesn’t know any better. It’s our job to educate them, involve them, include them in our process. They’re smarter than you think and treating them as if they know nothing because of a regional mentality/culture or whatever other excuse is only a reflection of how bad you are at your job. There are no more offices or cubicles. There is no more a distinguishing line of separation. Let’s climb down from our designer ivory towers. To do this we need a tool where not just designers can work, but where anyone can come in view, comment and even make changes. The sooner we bring the client into our world the more they’ll understand where we are coming from.
From Multiple Tools to One Tool to Rule Them All.
Gone are the days of switching from tool to tool, exporting, importing. We need one tool to rule them all, a complete integrated ecosystem for product design. For designers and design teams we waste a lot of time on-boarding, signing up, logging in, uploading, exporting, saving and then explaining the same process to the dev team and clients. It’s exhausting.
2020 is forcing us to find tools that do it all in one and do it well. We are sitting at home without our loving IT to help us install and uninstall the day away. For me this tool was Figma. I’m sorry Sketch, I know we had some good times and it’s hard for me to say this but… Ya basic. Figma has empowered me in so many ways that you couldn’t. User flows, wireframes, design, versioning, prototyping, dev handoff and presenting all in one. One fully integrated ecosystem, one tool to rule them all.
From Screens and Steps to an Animated Mindset
Gone are the days of sequential screens and traditional step-by-step flows. This is an oldie but an ever more relevant-ie. On a recent project, I had the pleasure of working with Gustavo Paris from Fantasy. Gustavo came in and basically, like 2020 in human form, upended all the work we had done for the past month. He analysed the screens and, in the nicest way possible, ripped them apart. We had approached the whole project with the wrong thinking. We were back in 2010 with next, back, close, exit, skip, cancel in all their traditional places. He pushed a massive mindset-shift to animated gesture based design and progressive reveal.
Armed with Gustavo’s feedback and a tool that allowed me to simultaneously design and animate in the same file, I discovered an entirely new way of looking at design. Designers may think in sequential screens but users do not. Users’ standards are higher than ever and coupled with the consequences of social distancing resulting in the surge of businesses having to shift to digital it’s no longer an option to lag behind. Again out of discomfort came opportunity. No exporting, importing, rendering etc. Animation should no longer be an afterthought, it’s integral to include in the beginning of the design phase.
From Clunky Backup Systems to Worry-Free Time Machines
Gone are the days of reopening, syncing, merging, saving. Being confronted with WFH it is more apparent that we cannot function with the old way of storing files. More than ever we need to join the cloud based world but how do we do so in a smooth seamless way without having to worry about backups, local files, branches and overriding other people’s work? Without having to worry about learning different systems with different logins? Without having to worry about downloading and uploading heavy files for transfer? Currently my team is using Abstract and Sketch and a teammate complained about waiting 40 minutes for a file to sync. 40 minutes. 250 babies are born every minute worldwide. That’s 10'000 babies born while you just sat there staring at their computer screen waiting for a file to sync. Time is the precious commodity of 2020. Time saved is time well spent.
From Multiple Uploads to Once-Off Dev Access
Gone are the days of awkward dev hand-offs. We no longer have the luxury to spend time on uploads and conversations with dev in MS teams (“Is this the latest version”) while we mildly sweat over worrying if we had uploaded it to InVision or not.
2020 is the time to welcome dev into our files and empower them to get what they want when they want and most importantly be reassured that whatever it is, they’re always working with the latest version. We need a world where we as Windows and Mac users can come together (2 meters apart, of course) and not have to deal with non OS agnostic tools.
In Summary
We as designers need to know that regardless of all this tool-talk, at the end of the day, we are not defined by our tools. We are defined by our cold brew coffee and our skinny jeans. Alright, alright, relax. We are defined rather by our willingness to be redesigned ourselves, over and over again, every day. To redesign our workflow, to redesign our minds, to redesign for new problems that will inevitably arise. It’s our adaptability to finding the best tool to solve those problems that make us good designers.
K bye
