Things You Won’t Learn in Design School
In the summer of 2016, I interned for a health care IT company based out of Lexington, Massachusetts. This was my first rodeo working professionally as a user experience designer in a mid-size company. Before that, I had only worked on design projects in academia and a small start-up which didn’t have a whole lot of stakeholders to answer to and constraints to work under. Even though design schools teach you how to design work mainly through projects and research papers, those projects happen in a vacuum. They are designed in a way that ensures that we as students learn the fundamentals of design work first. The focus is more on exploring methodologies rather than producing an outcome. As a result, a lot of our design decisions are not dictated by technical and business constraints and we are pretty much free to do what we want; take whatever direction we want to take irrespective of how it might effect everyone else involved.
Therefore, some of the experiences I had during my internship were a revelation of epic proportions. They eventually helped me become a better, more practical designer. Below, I outline some of the most important things I learned during the summer. If you are an experienced campaigner, you might agree with a lot of things I have mentioned. If you are just starting out in the field of design, I hope you find these useful (Please note that this not a criticism of the way design education is being imparted. It’s more of an exploration of things an inexperienced designer should be wary of when he/she starts working professionally as a designer):
- Selling your design using your soft skills:
Design projects in the design school end when you have done your research, followed your process and came up with a concept you are confident about (and of course prototyped it). However, in a professional setting, your role is far from over. Now, you have to present it to product management and engineering teams to get them onboard; to sell them your concept so that it can be implemented which can be a whole new ballgame (especially if you have a different accent or are from a different culture than your audience). Every stakeholder you are trying to sell your concept to will have their own criteria through which they will evaluate your design with. They will have their own motivations/goals. So, it’s imperative that you use your soft skills to find out what your ‘potential buyers’ care about and speak to it compellingly and eloquently when you are selling your concept. - Seeing your design through:
Even if you are able to convince everyone and your design does go to the production stage, developers might uncover problems with your design while they are trying to implement it. This would require you to go back to the drawing board and re-design some elements of your initial proposal. So essentially, your design work isn’t complete until it is finally shipped. Therefore, you have to ensure that you see your design through without a lot of sacrifices to it’s user friendliness. - Sketching early helps:
For my user research, I had to schedule meetings with some of the most important people in the company. Those meetings were spread out over 3 weeks. Therefore, for the first couple of weeks, I had my assumptions and some unrelated user research data to start my design process with. Because I didn’t have much to do, I, very hesitantly, decided to start sketching. I have never started that phase of my process without having done extensive user research before. So, it felt a little weird to be coming up with concepts that were based on my own assumptions and very little data. As a designer, it seemed very counter intuitive. However, it was only later that I realised that sketching early was the best decision I could have ever made. Not only did that help get my head into that problem space, it also helped me in coming up with good user research questions. The sketches ‘talked back’ to me. I realised what I needed to do and learn next in the context of my project. This resulted in a huge shift in the way I do design work. Now, I don’t wait for extensive research to be done and neither should you. Start sketching with whatever you know about your target user and problem space and that would eventually lead to more qualitative/insightful research data. - Things are seldom going to be perfect:
Owing to the complicated nature of the health care system and the end goal of the project being management/stakeholder buy-in, one to one user interviews would have been to costly an affair. Therefore, I wasn’t allowed to do user research with my target user group. In fact, I was restricted to reading [somewhat unrelated] user research documents and talking to clinical workflow specialists and members of the implementation team; the people who were in close contact with my target users. As someone who is so dependent on doing user research with my target audience to do design work, it felt very weird. This lead to a realisation that, as a designer, I need to adapt my design process to fit the needs or the situation of the project. There are constraints in the real world that WILL put you in an awkward position. Depending on what your situation is like, you will have to work your way around it and be resourceful. In my case, I had to make do with what I had at first. I talked to anyone who could provide me with some answers to the questions I had. When I realised that we will be doing usability testing with real users, I collaborated with the UX researcher in the company to conduct usability testing in a way that would allow me to learn more about my target user. In the end, my final proposal did have a design solution that was informed by qualitative user research; something I was gunning for from the beginning. - Giving business side of things importance:
I see a lot of young designers not doing this when they first start out. They fail to understand that companies hire designers not only to make their product better from a UX perspective but also from a business perspective. That means understanding an organisation’s goals and business models and how it’s products fit between the two. So, as a designer, it is absolutely vital that you know what are the business goals behind your project and what would be the best way of measuring your design’s effectiveness in the end.
Design, by nature, is messy. Not many people understand it. You will come across all kinds of stakeholders in your career. Some are going to be supportive while others might be a little apathetic. But the fact of the matter is, you will have to be practical. You will have to understand how organisations work. And, more importantly, you will have to collaborate with everyone regardless of their attitude. The only way to learn how to handle such situations is by putting yourself in one. Therefore, as a young designer, it is in your best interest to seek out as many internships or volunteering opportunities as possible. How else can you become competent enough to serve your end user? God knows we need better designers/design thinkers now more than ever.
