Sometimes you just want a sick designer
Advice for Designers, Managers and Startups
I work with lots of types of people
Start ups and entrepreneurs and directors and VPs and product managers but mainly with the people that run the organizational units we support
These people are usually opinionated & super smart
They have a vision for what they want and hire people like me to either bridge that vision to reality in design and product, or just use us for technical skill. It’s the same concept for business, development and design.
These people choose between maybe 3 different types of design roles
No matter your skill level as a designer, you’re going to be doing design work for a role meant for someone at level 1, 2 or 3:
- Level 1: a fresh designer role
- Level 2: the infamous intermediate design role
- Level 3: Sr. design roles / Design leadership
Problems
A big problem is to have someone junior in a more intermediate or senior role. It’s risky. They can learn along the way and then either stay to get the company better or get a better job because there’s a $20,000 raise across on the other side, and they’re tired of your antics.
On the flip side is having a Sr. designer in a Jr. role or intermediate role. A lot of UX/UI only projects need an intermediate skill-set with a bang up UI design skill-set.
The trade-off? If you bring on a Sr. Design leader, they may bring process and leadership you’re not looking for (or ready for).
What’s the right approach? Everyone needs to define their parameters early on and you can defeat the Dark Side together…
Read on for lessons learned.
Lessons
Mixing and matching people in roles brings challenges for everyone to recognize and learn how to navigate.
Less experienced folks come with the learning curve 📈 and more experienced folks come with processes and tool-kits ⚙️👷🏼♀️
But Sometimes people just want a sick designer to flow like water and tear it up for a Quarter or two.
Rules for success in this arcade game
Here are some rules in spending your quarters in this arcade game.
For professionals & employees:
- Don’t bust the arcade machine
- remember everyone is going to run out of quarters eventually
- quarters = both time, $, effort, problems, politics, intrigue, etc.
- a better arcade game might come along
- remember that the game is hard and you’ll win eventually…
- …but it doesn’t matter; see #2
- always prepare for the possibility of a new opponent
and for leaders and employers:
- the people who help you might run out of quarters
- every time it feels like ‘game-over’, it will cost more quarters to continue.
- you might run out of quarters eventually, or need to get more change.
- quarters = both time, $, effort, problems, politics, intrigue, etc.
- work really hard to understand the technical processes behind everything
- if you don’t do #5, ask for it to be explained to you fully and take the time to understand the variables behind everything because you are acquiring and building resources and process to always help you achieve goals now and in the future.
- Don’t bust the arcade machine
A lot of this might not matter, because sometimes you just want a sick designer.
