Maximize your team’s efficiency as an iOS Designer
Tips for iOS Designers working in a startup environment
Time. It’s a hot commodity for those building a new startup. There’s never enough of it and, for some in the team, it rings true especially hard.
As a designer you will have your share of time consuming events, but you are in a far better position in this game. The goal in this post is 2 part. The first part is maximizing efficiency so your team can actually ship a product. The second is understanding that you’re part of a team and need to minimize the negative time-based impact of your work.
Below are a few things that I’ve picked up along my journey that, I hope, will help your team ship an outstanding product sooner rather than later.
Cut design elements out of your PSD.
When you’re contracting they’ll often require your design files and they will handle the neccisary burden of chopping everything up.
In a startup, this is incredibly valuable time that is often a waste for your team’s developer. Let them do what they do best—build. You manage the graphics. This way you’ll avoid a design inept developer messing up your beautiful work and you’ll know what to expect to see on the device.
Highly recommended. In all likelihood, your developer works within a source control solution like github.com. Learn where your developer is storing the assets and ask how you should be saving your files. When the developer grabs the latest files they’ll automatially get that element you just touched up!
Buttons have 4 states! Plan for them.
It’s not efficient to design an enabled and highlighted state and a few days later you find your developer requesting a disabled state. Maybe a week later you find out that the button can actually be selected…
Just expect them all so you can completely check that off your list; enabled, highlighted, selected, disabled.
Your team’s developer can put all of your graphics into code, whether they’re used or not, and have them ready if they’re needed.
Be mindful about where you can stretch images.
In iOS you have the ability to stretch images. You create an image where, at some point, a horizontal or vertical line 1 px in width or height will begin repeating.
I’ve seen designers present a sheet where there were 10 buttons with the same background—they just had different lengths. Pay attention to where your team can take advantage of this. For example, take the button below.
Organize your design files.
There’s no avoiding these files for developers. They’ll need to actually see the design at some point and the more thoughtful you are the easier you make this for your developer.
Instead of one giant 50-100MB PSD file, split your work into a file per screen. At the same time, organize your layers. The worst possible thing you can do is not use folders.
Highly recommended. Chasing pixel perfection. Make it simple for your team to discover spacing information. Create an overlay and provide that information so the developer can easily see that an element needs to be 24 pixels away from that other design element.
Embrace your obsessive compulsive disorder.
Your team’s developer is drowned out by a forever increasing list of tasks. You simply can’t expect everything you say to be the core focus when implementation is a priority. Don’t worry about being critical of an element being 2px off—just write it down somewhere!
Highlight recommended.Create and manage this list as soon as possible.The last thing you want to do is surprise your team two weeks before the product is submitted.
Feel confident about your design before you O.K. it.
This one is hard. A design rarely ever feels completed so when do you give it the stamp of approval?
The last thing you want to do is let your team implement a design you’re not comfortable with. It’s incredibly inefficient and will wear your team down when your design is fluxuating so much.
Focus on the problem in front of you and find a 90% solution as soon as possible. This means that you’re 100% confident that what you are designing will fluctuate very little and your team can implement the design. You may re-design a button, but you’re not going to completely re-imagine the entire area.
Find a senior designer out there who can show you a few ways to test designs.
That’s a wrap!
Care for those on your team and work to build the most amazing experience for your customers that you possibly can. Focus on the product and stay away from distractions. Your time is valuable and your team needs it.
I’d love to hear from you. Follow me on Twitter, write me and check out what we’re up to at Evomail.
Be curious. Be hungry. Be a team player. GSD.
