Attributes of High-Performing Designers, Part 1: Transparency
When I’m asked what makes for a strong designer or design team, I keep returning to the same attributes: 1) transparency — and an open design process; 2) flexibility — and principled points of view; 3) joy — and a passion for the art and craft.
In this series, I unpack what those attributes mean and how they result in high performance. Check out part 2 on flexibility here. Read part 3 on joy here.
Transparency. Now you might be thinking, what is a designer hiding? We do reviews with non-designers (sometimes offering multiple design concepts) and incorporate that feedback into our work. We run user sessions and solicit feedback again from the people we’re designing for. We give our two minute update in morning standup and respond when there’s issues with our designs.
But I don’t think that’s transparent. I define transparency as:
an open design process when you proactively communicate about your process, needs and rationale with anyone who could contribute valuable information and may be impacted by your work.
To use a cliche, design is a team sport. As a member of a design team and a company, you need to work together with your teammates and respond to their actions, but also make decisions for the best of the team. (note: not a sports person, but I did watch Ted Lasso 😉⚽)
An open process does not mean telling your competitors (the opposing team) what you’re doing. It means the goal you scored was not a magical event — it was an obvious outcome from all the work you’ve done to get there. And your team knows what you’re doing to show up and bring the best to the game. You bring ideas to the plays and you have opinions, but you know that your teammates can help you make it better.
Proactive communication is necessary because the unknown is a scary space — where our imaginations can conjure up the worst scenarios. When you don’t speak up about what your plans are or when you see problems, distrust and errors fester and take on a life of their own.
Process, needs and rationale (oh my!)? Many organizations are a mixed bag when it comes to design maturity. Some people value what designer’s do; others don’t understand why designing a screen takes more than an afternoon. To get the most out of your teammates (more on that soon), you need to be able to translate what you’re doing and how it contributes to the end product. If your teammates see you taking power naps, will they understand how that helps you and the team win? Not until you tell them.
To control the design process, you need to present it like the investment it is. No one will know you need user input if you don’t talk explain why it’s important right now, how it helps us finalize design and what the effort will be. In design reviews, you need to explain why you chose the concept you did and engage respectfully in the conversation that follows.
Anyone? It might be a scary prospect to consider how many people across the company may be impacted or have information related to your work. However, these relationships are as important as the ones you have with your immediate product manager or engineers — and critical to avoid pitfalls. When I worked in ecommerce, merchandising (responsible for the catalog) and marketing had expertise in what worked and what didn’t — we could deliver work that worked for the business AND customers. That doesn’t mean we always agreed, and that tension pushed us towards conversations that refined our goals and often forced tough decision-making. Being honest about your goals and disagreements can get you closer to that elusive innovation.
You may be thinking: an open process means stakeholders will just tell me what to do — I’ll become hands behind a keyboard pushing pixels in Figma. An open process does not mean we do everything other people tell us, but it does mean we show “the method to the madness”:
- You remind them of the key research findings that informed this approach, and what that means for design work.
- You call out where you mimic competitors or reimagine what other companies did — and why Chewy is or isn’t the same.
- You show them your Figma sketches and why you avoided certain directions, because you did do the work to try alternatives.
- You tell them that, at this stage, we need to choose a concept and the next design review will have those details they keep asking about. And that you can’t wait to follow up with them for more detail.
Why transparency makes for better outcomes
We can better defend our work. Designers, especially those early in their career, can be fearful of presenting work that doesn’t feel perfect. I think it’s a fear of being caught missing a detail — and that can feel like someone is saying we didn’t do our job. But it’s impossible for us to know everything. The greatest failures often come from not showing work soon enough. There is a balance between enough detail to get feedback and so much detail that it clutters the conversation, but that’s where the next point comes in.
We can solicit better feedback. Transparency is about clearly describing where you are in the design process and what you need from your reviewers, managers and peers. Even in an ambiguous project, we all know what questions we need to answer in order to move forward. When describing what you need, you also have to acknowledge whether you can consume all their comments. We’ve all been victims of feedback that either has nothing to do with the goals of the review or that literally blow a project up (requiring redesign or more discussion up the leadership chain). You have the power to say, “I’ll note that feedback, but let’s focus on this question” or “It sounds like we need to revisit the goals, let’s take the time back and sync up offline.”
We can better leverage the experts in our companies. Gathering perspective from multiple teams is incredibly important and often design doesn’t spend enough time with its stakeholders outside of technical leadership. Design needs to remember it’s one team of an organization that has a lot of other folks who are good at what they do. These subject matter experts are invaluable inputs to our process and help us stitch together many experiences into one. Understanding what marketing strategies are being implemented with existing customers will contextualize the state of mind of our customers when they interact with our designs. Knowing common complaints from customer support will enable up to integrate key details we may not have otherwise. You may have monthly meetings with those stakeholders or you make a point to take notes when they present in all-hands and make friends with a member of that department. Design without them is like playing without the whole team.
We can make change easier. Additionally, when we don’t share what we’re working on with those peers, change management becomes a real hassle. When we release changes into the world in our digital products, we need to ensure the organization can support that work and give the customer the best, new experience. I’ve seen customer service agents send urgent confused messages because they are being asked about a feature they didn’t know existed. By articulating what we’re doing and why, we can prepare other teams for those changes and give them a chance to make their own changes to best support their piece of the customer’s experience.
By embracing transparency, we can realize our role as a key member on the company’s team. Other players will know what special skill got us on the team, that we’re ready to play our part in the big play, and that we also want that trophy at the end of the season.
In part two, I’ll break down flexibility (also known as adaptability). In part 3, I explore joy (also described as relishing the details).
