Navigating workplaces that are not design-first
Designers, picture this!
You get to work on a new project.
You’re collaborating with your PM on defining requirements from a design perspective.
You’re working with UX researchers on their user interviews. You have data at your fingertips to validate qualitative problems.
You’re conducting a design-led ideation workshop with stakeholders to come up with solutions to the problems.
You have a perfect component UI library to create your mocks in no time.
You iterate continuously on your low and high-fidelity prototypes, thanks to a constant feedback loop.
You hand your mocks over to engineering and QA on Zeplin easily, thanks to a fixed style guide and component tree.
There’s a shared understanding of information architecture practices that facilitates smooth discussions with front-end developers on what needs to be done.
Does that sound day-to-day to you? Or did you think ‘LOL, I WISH’?
While most companies have realized the value of their product’s UX and have given us designers a seat at the table, some are still catching up or choose to stick to the old ways.
As a result, some workplaces do not understand the benefit of design and that results in us being reduced to ‘pixel pushers’. So, how do you, the designer, make it easier for yourself to work in such environments? Here are a few tips from my experiences:
Be the ‘voice of design’
There’s no beating around the bush. If there’s no one to help you out, then you, the designer, have a responsibility to make sure that your opinion IS taken into account in any conversation regarding your product — especially with important executives and stakeholders. You have to constantly advocate for design and your users at every step.
How do you do this? Speak up. Be active.
You have to go the extra mile to work with the co-workers involved in your product for your designs to be truly useful. You have to ensure that they involve in you, by making them do just that.
No user research? Speak to product marketing or sales staff who have regular conversations with your customers. Find out what they’ve heard through the grapevine about issues that customers have with your product.
Lack of PM collaboration? Set up time on your PM’s calendar to talk to them about projects coming up in the next quarter and make sure they involve you in their roadmap development process.
Engineering and QA giving you a tough time about your mocks? Sit down with them and understand what they need from you in terms of hand-offs. Hash out what you need to do and what they should compromise on.
Meetings are all about business goals? Showcase qualitative and quantitative user data. Talk about the user’s side and attach actual user quotes to truly highlight user issues.
Still not getting any appreciation your team’s hard work? Screw it, send out summaries to the larger organization of the work you’ve done with your teams every quarter with data backing up their performance.
It’s simple — If folks in your company trust and respect you, they will trust and respect the design process.
Involve stakeholders in the process that you want
This tip goes hand in hand with the previous tip. While it is key for co-workers to involve you in their processes and listen to your ideas, it’s also essential that you involve them in YOUR processes as well.
Ensure executives dial-in to any user research sessions. Have brainstorming and design workshops with your stakeholders.
Refine business and user requirements with your PMs based on data and user feedback.
Involve engineers early on in your design process so that you have more time to explain your decisions to them. Sit with QA to understand the edge cases that may be missing.
Well, why should I do all this, you may think.
There’s two major benefits to this:
Your credibility increases as a designer because people start seeing the true value of design. PMs, engineering, QA, PMM — all will be more likely to listen to you, and you’re more likely to push user-friendly designs with less friction.
You’re also more likely to push the product team towards an ‘ideal design process’, instead of simply hacking it. By getting more people on your side who see the value, you can actually end up calling shots on your design work and pave the way for new processes!
Become a ‘Guerrilla’ Designer
Often times, these workplaces have issues in the general design process itself — lack of user research, an undefined Sketch library and bad UI elements. While the first two tips are more long-term solutions, here’s something you can do in the short-term:
Do things your own damn way anyway.
Don’t try to fit into the existing design process. Fix it by starting from scratch.
Use existing designs, patterns and fonts as a basis, but create your own elements for a cleaner and better experience.
Do user-testing sessions with the folks hanging out at Starbucks, Peets, Blue Bottle. If that doesn’t work, there’s always friends and family.
Start creating a UI component library with the designs you make to ensure that your clean elements can be used across the board.
Would this even work? If you’re in a work environment that isn’t conducive to design and yet, you provide incredibly well-thought out and clean mocks, you’ll get a lot of pats on the back by your co-workers.
Pick and Choose Your Battles Carefully
The picture I’ve painted so far sounds quite rosy so far, right?
*Buzzer sounds* WRONG! You’re changing how things have traditionally worked. You’re bound to ruffle some feathers and get into some intense arguments with the people you work with.
You need to remember that you may win some battles and lose the others. It’s on you to choose which ones you want to fight. Evaluate the importance of what is important to the design and what’s not.
Say you’ve introduced a new element to the UI library while tweaking the UX of a very important flow and an engineer comes up to you and says that this element is going to take time to build. You need to make the decision about the UI element’s importance in the future. If it’s central to the flow, stand your ground. If it’s not, let them have this one — they’ll owe you in the future.
The key that binds it all — patience!
None of this is going to happen in the blink of an eye! It can take months, sometimes years to change the culture of a company. Accept the flaws in the processes that are taking place around you, plan out what needs to be changed and appreciate the small wins with your team!
Liked this article? Want to know more about my work? Or do you just want to grab some Peet’s or Blue Bottle and chat about design in the Bay? Either way, check out my portfolio at http://salonijoshi.net or email me at salonijoshi2608@gmail.com.
