The benefits and pitfalls of pair designing
We’ve all heard about pair programming, right? How about pair designing? Cooper, the UX design consultancy firm founded by Alan Cooper that defined goal-directed design and pioneered the use of personas, led the charge championing pair designing way back in 1997. While pair designing isn’t a new idea, not everyone is aware of this approach to working together.
Benefits of pair designing:
- Promote learning — Everyone has expertise and skills that others don’t. Working together in a pair lets you learn directly from each other.
- Get to know each other — You can’t help but get to know someone personally when you’re working alongside them. Being genuinely interested in your partner, talking in terms of their interests, and making them feel important (because they are!) improves teamwork and builds meaningful relationships.
- Improve designs — Lean on your design partner to help you get better. When they ask clarifying questions and challenge assumptions you end up building off of each other’s ideas. Working with a partner also forces you to articulate your decisions and opens you up to the idea that your designs may be incorrect, incomplete or need improvement.
- Share ownership — Pairing creates a culture of “we” not “me.” You remove egos and since no single person “owns” a design, you’re both responsible for what you create.
- Move faster — Having a design partner keeps you focused and moving quickly. When you’re working together, you share work early and often and move faster because you know your partner is relying on your work to complete theirs.
- Share knowledge — Knowledge of a product or experience should never rest with a single “expert.” By sharing your expertise with your design partners, and rotating pairs after extended periods of time, you help your entire team better understand your business and the end-to-end experience we’re designing for.
- Expand reach — Because you’re sharing the workload on projects, you’re able to contribute to multiple projects and will therefore enjoy more variety in the types of work you’re doing.
- Divide tasks — Designing is only part of your work. Being able to divide tasks like responding to emails, attending stand-ups and taking notes in design critiques helps you maintain momentum.
- Support one another — We’re in this together. Having another voice providing design support within project debates and discussions helps ensure our point of view is well represented.
How to design as a pair:
Because no two designers or projects are alike, designers are paired with another who has complimentary skills and are assigned depending on the assumed needs of the project (scope, time, perceived level of effort).
We implement Cooper’s “Gen/Synth” method at Getty Images. The “generator” comes up with ideas, the “synthesizer” asks questions, probes and challenges while at the same time considering the big picture and larger context.
Design pairs divide and conquer, roughing out the high-level concept together before deciding how best to split up and tackle designs and key activities. Designers both take turns in the “generator” and “synthesizer” roles when coming together to review, discuss and debate.
Common pitfalls of pair designing:
- Not defining activities and roles — Be intentional and clearly set expectations within and outside design about who’s doing what and when.
- Jealousy and competitiveness — The work we do is a reflection of all of us. Collaborate and be humble. Be more interested in making the best idea happen, not your idea.
- Not aligned — It’s confusing to everyone when design pairs are saying and doing different things. Design pairs are aligned when you’re able to represent your work together with a consistent story and rationale.
- Different speeds — Work too fast and you leave your partner behind. Work too slow and you impact your partner’s ability to do their best work. Your pace and cadence must work for everyone.
- Inconsistent designs — It shouldn’t be obvious who worked on what element, screen or flow. Work collaboratively and share your work early and often with your partner. This ensures you’re both heading in the same direction and your designs seamlessly fit together
Tried pair designing? Would love to hear about your experiences in the comments!
