Appreciating the value of design
A couple of days ago I was at Halfords to buy a new bike. Finally decided to start riding again after more than 10 years in which I totally disregarded the idea of biking.
Don’t know why I gave up but now, after moving to London and seeing everybody riding and enjoying the long commutes to work on their bikes I said “Yep, I’m gonna get one.” And there I was, ready to get my own bike.
And while I was waiting to talk to a store clerk, a young, maybe 5 year old girl together with her father was checking out some water bottles for her little bike. And I overheard her saying “Dad, look. It’s only 5,99 pounds.”
Yes, it was cheap definitely, 5,99 was a bargain and her corporate looking dad could have bought 100 of them without any problem. But his reply was “Just 5,99? That’s great, can you borrow me 6 pounds sweetie?” He replied in a warm tone and somehow even if his girl knew he was being funny, I am sure that she understood the lesson behind it.
We must correctly appreciate the value of things. The same goes with design. We need to appreciate the work put in, the decisions that were made together and not suppose things were realised that easy.
Especially in large companies where politics play a large part in the development of a product, managers often change requirements and even the scope of a project in the middle of development, making the work put in up until that point redundant. Even if the design was signed off and there are no concerns regarding the user experience or development challenges, many “key” people change functionality just because they can.
Just because you can it’s not a reason enough.
Even if it means adding more functionality and features, it doesn’t mean that you have to overdo it. You decided on a feature, you started development, let it be finished, test it out and change afterwards, depending on the user feedback.
Radu Fotolescu is an User Experience Designer based in London, currently working in FinTech. Founder of UX Design Today — UX Courses & Axure Libraries.
