Best Design Advice No One Ever Gave Me
Deliver Quantity & Quality
Throughout life, you hear the cheesy saying, “quality over quantity.” In most situations this is good advice. Not in the design world.
To be clear, this isn’t an excuse to show 10 half-assed designs. This means, instead of showing one design you believe to be perfect, show 3 great ideas. The ampersand in the title of this section is important — we’re trying to strike a balance and deliver on both.
Time for a real-world example: Most projects start with a list of product requirements. The people who come up with the requirements usually have an idea of how they believe the product should look (whether they tell you or not). Quantity and quality comes into play when there are differing opinions about implementation. The best way to keep the project moving is to show at least two examples:
- What they asked for (and any problems you find with it)
- Your proposed solution (and how it’s better than the first option)
Even if you know option 1 won’t work in your head, showing the initial design is critical. Stakeholders won’t be satisfied until they can actually see its shortcomings. Usually a mashup of the two concepts will be the final outcome, but that’s better than executing a design you disagree with.
Presentation is Everything
You could have the world’s best design, but if you don’t know how to explain the problem being addressed and the reason for your design decisions, the design will never get approved. Context is king when it comes to pitching your idea or concept to others.
There are two easy steps that will help you give a great presentation:
- Do your research: Collect screenshots of how others have solved similar problems. Sources can include your competitors, and well-known design leaders (Facebook, Google, Apple etc). Anything to get you ready to make an awesome design
- Walk people through your whole design process leading up to the final concept. This will help everyone in the room understand that you considered many different options, and didn’t come to your conclusion arbitrarily. If all goes well, the stakeholders will see the flaws in all the designs leading up the the final design..
If all you do is show your final design without providing context, people may not understand how you arrived at your conclusion and ask you to explore various other approaches. At that point, defending your work and pointing out the flaws in their suggestions might sound more defensive than you would like.
Continual learning / Never be Satisfied
This is something that is very important to me and a major part of being in a creative profession. I always make it a priority to learn new skills (software, leadership, dev languages, etc.) — whatever I need to continue to grow as a designer.
I don’t buy the excuse that people are too busy to learn, because almost everyone has some free time at some point in the day. It comes down to what you do in that free time.
If you become satisfied with your current abilities, you will soon become irrelevant as a designer.
At my first job I learned how to write html, css and some basic js and became a “developer.” When I took my second job I learned how to make illustrations and add animations to my designs. At my current job, I’m learning how to communicate my thoughts more clearly and build prototypes to better demonstrate my designs.
I never want to get to a point in my career or life, when I have the feeling that there is no more room for growth or learning. That’s why I am constantly striving to develop new skills whenever I can.
Steer Clear of Trends
Trendy words/designs/clothes, etc. are exactly that: trends. They will, without a doubt, die out and look dated (Remember skeumorphic design). I try to avoid incorporating short-lived trends whenever I can in life and in my career.
Dress trendy and you have to buy a new wardrobe every season; Dress in classics and you can wear your clothes forever.
Sometimes, you can get caught up trying to get more likes or favorites or whatever it may be, by following trends. I see tons of concepts with text or buttons overflowing past the background a random distance. Or I see a title that fits perfectly with the image designers chose but if any other image was used, the same layout would never work. Yet these shots have hundreds of likes…
Disclaimer: I understand dribbble and other sites like it are meant to somewhat of a creative release for people. Therefore some of the work is strictly for fun and was never meant to be used in the real world. I’m not saying trying new things and exploring new styles is bad — but it’s not practical.
My suggestion is to not get sucked into this. If your design helps people use your product or understand what to do and only gets 5 likes, it’s still a great design.
On a semi-related note, I’ve conducted a number of interviews lately and I’ve picked up on many things throughout the process of trying to hire a fellow designer. Every time a candidate interviews with us and answers questions in buzzword after buzzword, the general consensus is they can’t communicate their reasoning and thoughts very well for why they made certain design decisions.
TLDR
First off, shame on you if you scrolled down to this point without reading anything else. Secondly, here are the key takeaways you should remember from the article.
- Quality over quantity isn’t good enough in the design world, you need both to be a great designer.
- Always make sure you explain the problems you’re solving and reasoning for your designs as clearly as possible, to ensure your projects moving.
- Capitalize on any opportunity to learn new skills.
- There is a time and place for trendy designs and words, but it’s not the best solution to most problems.
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Thanks for taking the time to read this article, if you have any comments about it I would love to hear what you think.
You can also check out my other article I wrote.
Thanks to Hayley Parke and Ali Torbati for helping me make my thoughts make more sense.
