How to survive as the only designer in your company
It’s finally happened, you are a paid designer. All the late night hours studying, practicing, going to small business conventions, taking small jobs, finding small victories. You’ve attended seminars and practiced working in groups, made empathy maps and met experts. You couldn’t possibly feel more ready for your first day, and right on time. No more hypothetical scenarios, this is real work. From now on, all of your tasks will be specific and structured and—
“Welcome to the company! Here’s what our design looks like. We need it to look…. I don’t know. Not like this. Better, obviously. Something cleaner? We have some opinions on what we like, but we were really hoping you would give us some options and inspire us. Do you think you could mock up a few drafts for us to choose from by next week? Thanks! Really looking forward to seeing what you come up with.”
Not what you were expecting.
But that’s ok, design is still a luxury, and it will stay that way for a while. If you’re the only designer in your company, then you need to learn how to be a team of one until reinforcements arrive. Here are some tips which will save you a lot of time and energy:
- Draw your notes
- Educate everyone
- Limit your influences
- Make one draft
- Immerse your audience
1. Draw your notes
As a UI designer, we don’t draw nearly enough in the workplace. We’re afraid of having our ideas reduced to crooked lines and squiggles, so we instead set a reminder like ‘design invitation card’ and we make time to create something presentable. Don’t do this, your brain doesn’t like it. Draw, because it’s what you’ve always done. When sharing ideas in a meeting, rather than describing a design, consider getting up on the whiteboard and drawing it out. Then take those sketches and redraw them later if you wish, but don’t lose the initial opportunity to capture a spark of creativity.
2. Educate everyone
When you educate those around you, you create a support structure for your ideas. Managers don’t like being in a position where they can’t manage their risk, and so this can create a hesitation around new concepts and technologies. You can make a huge difference by educating people.
Your goal shouldn’t be to bring an entire audience to your level, but rather, to the next level. Everyone should feel welcome to learn from you. If you have time in your schedule once a month, consider hosting a round table discussion. The more your audience knows, the more they will challenge you on bold design ideas, and it will make you a stronger designer.
3. Limit your influences
User experience is an emotional field, and those involved in the process can have strong feelings about your direction. Always keep in mind that your job is to meet acceptance criteria, not to make everyone happy. You need to learn how to say thank you, and take it from there. Often, you will have to push back against pressure to force an idea into the work to please a client or director, but there is no idea that’s good enough to implement last-minute.
You need to decide when the conversation starts, and more importantly, once you have a concept with which you are confident, you need to end the conversation. There will always be time for revisions, and everyone will be happier for it in the long run.
4. Make one draft
I imagine this will be the most controversial point, but here’s how I feel: You don’t want to make a second draft. In fact, every designer who is forced to present three options, is burning a hole into one of those options with their eyes, praying it will be chosen. (It won’t, it never gets chosen.)
You know the option you want is more than just about how it looks. You’ve thought about how it will scale, how users will feel after looking at it for the 900th time, or after 45 minutes straight — you can’t reduce that research down to a popularity contest. By starting with multiple drafts and narrowing down to one, you do nothing to improve your work.
Instead, start with one draft (call it your “super-draft”) and work your way towards the best option you can put forward. If it doesn’t work out, start over. You shouldn’t have to do that often, but when you do, you should be covered by all the time you saved not creating drafts you hate.
5. Immerse your audience
If you are the only designer at your company, then there’s a good chance your meetings are among the more engaging ones. Take advantage of that! Design your presentations around your audience, use big, sharp images and bright colors. Immerse them in your world so they can understand your perspective.
One way to reinforce a visually powerful presentation is by using rhetorical questions, rather than glossing over what you consider to be obvious. Instead of saying something like “I designed the new header with a fixed position because we clearly need it,” try something like this:
“When you scroll on our page now, the header scrolls out of view. Why is this a problem? Well, in our case, we update our users with header notifications. By making our header fixed, we give up a few pixels in exchange for constant contact with our users. Isn’t that worth the investment?”
You’ve created your super-draft, this is how you sell it. If you are going to truly immerse your audience, then your goal should not be simply to get an approval, you should be aiming for an endorsement.
Conclusion
This article is an effort in following rule #2. When a brand or product has a high-quality design, this can be a strong indicator that what’s underneath the design is solid as well. The health of the entire system is integrated, so you as a designer need to find a healthy way into the system. This means sharing clear, constructive thoughts, gathering the right support, and using the proper influences to come up with the best single idea you can.
You can do this.
