The invisible design skills

Christopher Barr explains how mindfulness and thoughtful management can help foster a healthy design environment

There are many techniques you learn as a designer to improve your work. But what skills build a better design environment? These invisible skills (as I call them) are not something you’re formally taught. Your art director may
teach you how to present your work, but I am sure no one will sit down and tell you how to create good relationships with your stakeholders, developers, marketers and anyone else in your feedback loop.

In order to promote these types of relationships in my teams, I’ve taken inspiration from meditation and philosophy to generate my desired design dynamic. I follow these principals every day.

Mindfulness

We all need to be mindful of others throughout the day. In meditation, mindfulness is a practice used to focus your attention on a physical sensation, like your breathing. Even if you don’t practice meditation, you can learn to use this technique in your everyday communication. Next time you’re in a meeting, notice when you’ve stopped listening and refocus your
attention on the speaker.

Listening may sound obvious, but when you pay attention, you might realise your mind has wandered away, thinking about the project. You could find yourself getting angry with the critique, turning thoughts into defences. If you’re not listening, you’re robbing yourself of the ability to ask intelligent questions.

When your attention is distracted, you lose the speaker’s train of thought. Distracted designers tend to ask repeat questions, or fail to consume the information at all. Give whoever is speaking the respect of listening and they’ll pay the same mindfulness back to you.

Team creativity

Get your stakeholders sketching. Why? Words sometimes get the point across, but everyone can react to a design. Getting your team up and drawing breaks the language barrier and makes everyone an active participant. Encourage your team to put pen to paper and start sketching.

Make rudimentary doodles, and get the non-designers comfortable and active in the creative process. Start drawing early and often throughout your project. Even copywriters can provide typed out headline layout solutions.

Bringing your whole team together to collaborate on the design brings a sense of ownership over your project, which leads to better work from everyone. An unattached engineer isn’t compelled to deliver precisely engineered designs like a highly engaged engineer is. The same goes
for anyone involved in your project.

It takes many to build a product. Not your idea? Not a problem. Being able to recognise a great idea is smarter than needing it to be your idea

Design king

The philosopher Confucius said, “The king’s mind is the wind, and grass are the minds of the people: whither the wind blows, thither the grass bends.” Let’s replace ‘king’ with ‘designer’ and imagine ‘the people’ are your colleagues and stakeholders. A virtuous designer will own up to mistakes, give others credit, share lots of ideas and maintain an inclusive design process. In return, your colleagues will bend with you and give you the same respect.

If you rule as a dictator, closing your design process to new ideas, your colleagues will stick to their opinions and shut down yours. A successful Design King knows it takes many to build a product. Not your idea? Not a problem. Being able to recognise a great idea is smarter than needing it to be your idea.

Design Kings listen to everyone, encourage feedback, and speak for the user, but they also know that taking critique verbatim is not wise. You must consider the consequences of every edit in the role of your design system. Yes, make edits, but don’t make edits just because so-and-so said so. Instead, develop a better solution to the problems. Trim copy, reorder the page, animate, and so on, to improve your design. Make design your solution to your problems.

An open design environment will make presenting ideas and creating great work easier on your team. Getting great design out the door means not going at it alone. These principals are about creating an environment in which design can thrive. A little mindfulness, encouragement and attention to your team can contribute to creating that environment.

Christopher is a senior product designer focused on mobile and emerging interfaces

This article originally appeared in issue 273 (November 2015) of net magazine.