The common sense behind design alignment
A summary of my design alignment process and how it helps prevent rework.
I know, the title might as well read “BOO”
It’s a scary process but is a necessary skill for everyone to have.
PS: If you are good at poker, you’re probably already good at convincing people about your ideas :p
How is team alignment achieved?
Whether we think about alignment from a design process perspective or an everyday point of view, I follow certain steps that are uniform across.
It’s not a framework, but it is common sense I feel.
Begin with a Why?!
Knowing why I am solving a problem is usually the first step. If I am not convinced it’s a problem worth solving, I certainly can’t convince others (even with special inception powers).
This brings me to my next point
Do we know this will add value?
In most cases, I get convinced that a feature is valuable because logically it makes sense to me. But if you don’t have customer validation, it’s probably time to revisit your consciousness and ask yourself again “Is this really a problem?”.
As much as I like to start my sentences with “If I am a user”; I am not the user and Life is not a bed of roses :’)
This is where data validation helps bring internal and external alignment.
Lo-fi is ❤️
I learned this the hard way.
A designer’s worst nightmare is people viewing our unfinished work. I have literal nightmares where my wireframes are hung at an art gallery in Paris and people are going around commenting on them.
On the contrary, Do you know what’s worse than people viewing your unfinished work? Scrapping your finished, fully-polished high fidelity design that you spent months working on because the stakeholders were not aligned on the direction.
I read this interesting phrase in an email from our SVP of engineering and it has stayed with me ever since.
Invite controversies early
In the past few projects I have undertaken; I start from a concept and imagine its ideal future. Then I work my way back to an MVP, all in grey and white.
This helps finalize a direction for the project in the short and long term.
Although, hold on. I tend to make another mistake at this step.
I don’t take wireframes to stakeholders. We internally finalize a concept. We start working on high-fidelity which is then shown to the product team for feedback. No one knows what the feedback is supposed to be on at this point, UI or UX.
In a good design culture, It’s important to cultivate a process where designers can openly present their concepts and have an ideational discussion about them without feeling diffident.
As designers, we should practice being open to feedback on low-fidelity designs and start presenting them more frequently after a few deep breaths and reminding ourselves of this awesome article :)
Prototype
Prototyping = Storytelling
If I wasn’t a designer, I would have been a cinematographer 🎥
A prototype tells a story. You start from a user pain point and you walk through the solution. It’s a whole plot made from start to end and you are the awesome actor waiting to make it all happen.
If stakeholders are already aligned from concept to lo-fi, they’ll probably appreciate the design flow. The feedback can now be focused primarily on UI and interaction.
Prototyping helps get better UI feedback
If you are lucky and I am your “Onboarding” buddy, the first thing you’ll probably hear me say is “Do you prototype your designs?”
If your answer is a No, I am not judging you but maybe just a Lil bit 😈
When I learned Figma and started using the tool, The one tab I couldn’t stay away from was the Prototype panel. I was mesmerized by it mostly because the prototype made me feel empowered.
I was able to show off apps I was creating using Figma Mirror and everyone thought it was ready to use. They would request features like Google login.
At this point, I had to come clean and accept I didn’t build anything and that this was merely a prototype.
That’s not why I encourage it now. A prototype makes you think deeper about the interaction and whether the UI makes sense. Additionally, it helps identify if there’s a need for more visual cues.
I’ve observed how prototyping has helped me prevent certain mistakes even before I hand off my designs; mistakes that would not have been found until QA.
Once the prototype is good to go, you can pat your shoulder and roll up your sleeves coz QA is coming your way.
As we say, Design is never done ✅
But you can rest assured that the involved members are all on the same page 💪
