Moodthy Alghorairi
Jul 21, 2017 · 2 min read

Let’s turn this around.
Q: WHY would you hand a professional architect your own plans to “color in”?

1- because you sense there’s something you don’t know or have missed and she’ll catch but ..
- you don’t want to really pay her full fee.

This overlooks the fact that the plans you’ve drawn up will never equate the plans she would draw up because hers are based on her knowledge of multiple systems that impact the structure and stability of your house and yours are based on what you think looks good.

She’ll have to redraw the plans anyway, taking in all the same considerations as she would normally do, only — if she accepts these plans– she may compromise her aesthetics and design decisions to take into considerations some of your design choices. In other words, you’ll pay the same, but not get her usual standard.

I’m going to switch back now from the architect metaphors to designer.

2- because you want to feel in control or take credit of the design. This is what you submitted in a meeting and it was accepted by the stakeholders there. Basically, she’s your AI design bot.

If you yourself have a history of delivering solid design and she’s junior to you, this is respectable, but if not, good luck finding talented people to work with you in the future.

3- they are very real constraints in the product (e.g. you’re developing for an in house system, using a particular platform and library and don’t have time or budget to build custom components), and this is what the developers have already built, but you feel it’s “wrong” somehow and think the answer is in theming and branding the existing UI.

I have accepted wireframes for that last reason when there was a 10 day turnaround window for a big end client over the holidays, where meetings and discussions of how the spec was limited was hard to arrange with all parties involved (especially as the meeting would involve people speaking three languages). It was basically a paid favour, and it’s ok as a rarity, but not as a regular workflow.

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    Moodthy Alghorairi

    Written by

    @atomicbutterfly is a digital product designer, consultant, parrot mama, runner, and carb lover. Also on http://wyld.media/blog/