Is It Enough to Be a Good Designer?
Hello Dear Reader!
At this point i assume you are either a designer or somehow involved into design as a process. Or you can just have a role within the product development team.
If you work in a team, is it enough to do your part well or can you maybe go beyond that?
In this article i want to talk about the importance of within-team awareness, the process, team roles, some of the activities throughout the product development and, of course, the communication. I want to talk about user experience expertise and your place in it.
Actually i’ve only used the word “Designer” in the title as i’m a designer myself and the article has been very much effected by my experience, in fact though this article would be interesting for anyone working in a cross-functional team.
So lets assume your team is working on this huge enterprise project . You can confine yourself to doing your part only, or you can as well be interested in what other people around you are doing, how and why they are involved in certain activities. What is their contribution and what place it has in a big process of product development. What stages that process consists of, what deliverables are obtained throughout those stages, which of them are presented to the client, at which point of the development process and why.
Answers to all of those questions are small components of one big mechanism you either know about or not. One way or another you are the part of it. It’s not about what you do, not even about how you do it, it’s about the “why?”.
So should you be aware of all the expertise you are a part of? Basing on my experience i’ve distilled a few points why you, as a team member, need to have a pretty good understanding of all the scheme of things around you, including some aspects of project management, business analysis, architecture and even development.
Motivation.
Having such knowledge makes you feel more assertive and confident about activities you perform as a team member. At this point, it doesn’t really matter whether you are UI or UX designer, researcher, project manager, analyst or you work in the totally different field. It’s always a good idea to realize that what you do is important.
Sometimes to do so you need to see the results of your work as at least a tiny molecule of something bigger, something that makes its contribution to the global development.
Such perception can be a great driving force to push you forward. It motivates you to improve and be passionate about your own investment into the big plan.
Time management.
When you see your work as a part of a big process with other participants it means you know where your responsibilities start and where they finish. Now you can better use your focus and know exactly what to be prepared for.
No one can argue that time is a treasure. In fact, I believe that’s one of design prior targets — to save people’s time for things that are more important to them. Designers serve people so that those, in turn, can be more efficient at curing the diseases, exploring the space or inventing new ways for leading the humanity forward. And the only resource we have to make all of that happen is time, both ours and other people’s.
Efficiency.
Understanding team roles and how they correlate implies that you always know whom to address any project related questions or issues.
The clearer the responsibilities of each team member are, the less confusion and misunderstanding within the team and fewer internal conflicts take place. Consequently, the less time it requires to use everyone’s potential in the most efficient way, including yours. What else makes you maximally efficient at what you do if not the use of your abilities, skills, and potentially placed into a favorable environment?
Career Growth.
It’s good for your career. Knowing how it’s done by a complex approach lets you grow way faster professionally as you can quickly reach your destination when you actually see it.
Moreover, you can even try to start your own business if you understand the particular steps every team member should take in the process after the client’s statement: “I want to sell my tasty bagels all around the world”. Imagine that sentence is all you need to start the big machine running: assign the roles, build up the process, decide what research activities to use and how to arrange communication with a bagel baker. Exciting isn’t it!?
Understanding the big picture can actually let you grow professionally into any branch of the product development tree.
It makes you a better salesman.
It’s easier to attract the new client. If you understand the process, the way it’s applied and you can reach your customers with that, the chances that the client would prefer other providers are lower. The reason is that such expertise is offered as a set of complex solutions for building the product from the rough idea.
Sure this point doesn’t help much if your role is not a salesman specifically, but the design is very much about selling and if you are not a salesman yet, you can become one when you know your goods thoroughly.
I’m sure many people from UX field faced the difficulty to persuade their customer to use the proper approach when it comes to user research. Such activities as user interviews, card sorting or early user testing might be harder to pitch because their result (and so the profit) is not as explicit to the client as the effect of detailed mock-ups is. It’s not much visible as the result of separate activities, but put that puzzle piece to the best ones and the beautiful picture will shine on your table and reflect in your client’s eyes.
Plus, for that matter, here are a few extra points why the client would prefer to deal with one well-organized team rather than separate vendors. From the client’s perspective it might just appear:
- Safer. They don’t have to let many vendors in their internal business;
- Less time-consuming. No time spent on finding the right people to build the team for the project;
- Cheaper. No resources spent on extra time for knowledge transfer and putting together all the sides of product development;
- More effective. A client gets better result due to the collaboration within one undivided and well-tuned team synchronically dedicated to their project.
You can switch if you want.
Understanding the basics of what other people in your team do, can actually help you to move entirely different direction much more smoothly. For example, you can start conducting user research even if all you did before was visual design.
Maybe you want to try yourself at business analysis, you can do it if you know how business requirements are gathered (as obvious as it sounds). I know a few people who moved from quality assurance to business analysis after observing both the common process and their colleagues place in it. It actually helped them to prepare themselves so they could do the job.
I hope this piece was of any value. As I tried to share some of my thoughts on the topic, I expect it will provide you with some food for reflection At least I hope it will motivate you to take some interest in the big mechanism around you.
In my turn, will try to cover more detailed overview in my next series of publications where I will share my research on a subject of UX expertise and an early project start approach.
Stay productive and happy Tuesday :)
