Design better vs being a better designer
How can designers become better designers by looking beyond ‘design craft’?
When I first started working as a UX Designer, all I cared about was how much I knew Sketch, how many UI components I could name, how many UX laws I could apply, and whether or not I had read every single “must-read UX book” out there. I was inclined towards learning all the different prototyping tools and learn how to make the coolest looking mocks out there. To me, these were the key elements of becoming a great designer.
As I continued my journey, engaging in discussions with more and more stakeholders, shipping features and products, understanding release cadence, engineering complexities, and company priorities, I started understanding different skills that are involved in being a designer. I recently started reading Articulating Design Decisions: Communicate with Stakeholders, Keep Your Sanity, and Deliver the Best User Experience by Tom Greever which is a refreshing read and really validated some of the perspectives I developed over time regarding being a better designer.
Becoming a good designer is basically becoming good in a lot of things. And the actual ‘design’ work is only a part of it.
So, what is design better vs being a better designer?
I love explaining and understanding things via diagrams. So I thought I should make one about what I am trying to communicate.
Being a designer basically compromises of three key elements- Craft, Communication and Collaboration. All three of them are equally important in building skills as a designer.
‘Design’ in my head refers to the craft part of it. This is where you practice principles of visual design, learn design tools, do prototyping, acquire knowledge about UI components, practice research methods, code in HTML, CSS, JS, etc. This is where you spend most of your time learning things during the initial stages of your career. These are the things you put on your resume under the ‘skills’ section.
This is what I meant by being able to ‘design better’. Improving your craft definitely helps you in designing better.
But…
The key to becoming a better designer does not end here. There are other aspects to that as well. It’s like being a great chef but not being able to run a successful restaurant. To be able to run a successful restaurant, you need to learn a ton of other things- logistics, people management, unit economics, health codes, demand and supply, the list goes on. Being a designer is more of a job. Your job is to fulfill business needs, which could be from your client or your employer.
So when you are working for a business need, you are typically working with a bunch of stakeholders. For example, if you are working for a tech company, you could end up working with a scrum team, with a product manager, a program manager, and a bunch of developers. There is also a good possibility that you could be working with other designers, product leads, engineering leads, and UX researchers. When you are working in such an ecosystem, it is very important to build skills outside of the ‘craft’ section of things. You have to be equally good in communication and collaboration.
What does it mean to be a ‘good communicator’?
Good design is not only about the ‘craft’ side of things such as layout, color, and typography, but it is also about how you present it. Can you articulate your thought process? Can you present it as a story? Can you speak about intentionality in your designs? Do you abruptly pull up mocks or do you provide context about the problem you are solving? All of these things matter a great deal, and it most certainly impacts how stakeholders perceive your design.
Being a good designer also means that you understand your business needs and organizational priorities. It also means that you understand your success metrics, your product lingo, and the overall challenges of the project. This is critical because knowing all of this helps you in weaving these things in your design presentation.
Okay, and what does it mean to be a ‘good collaborator’?
Understanding collaboration is the next key element in being a better designer. A good designer not only understands craft and communication but also understands the collaboration process.
col·lab·o·ra·tion
/kəˌlabəˈrāSH(ə)n/mid 19th century: from Latin collaboratio(n- ), from collaborare ‘work together’.
When we are working within a team, we need to understand that we are working with a bunch of people. People, a collective of individuals who have their own unique identities, preferences, thoughts, ideas, perspectives, and cultures. When we are working on solving complex problems, everyone has their own view of a solution. In such cases, presenting great designs through a narrative may not always work. You could work on a design for months, could have done multiple iterations and usability testing, but if you are not a good collaborator, your designs will most likely not go anywhere.
A good designer needs to work well within a team and listen to everyone’s perspectives. They need to develop empathy towards stakeholders. They need to do relationship building. They should be able to do conflict resolution. They should invest time in understanding team dynamics.
How to get there?
The first step is to acknowledge the fact that there is more to a designer job than the craft side of things. With plenty of online design resources available focusing only on craft aka hard skills, designers, especially new designers, are vulnerable to this tunnel vision of acquiring skills for craft and not paying enough attention to the other two pieces of the puzzle which will help in their career.
There are tons of resources out there that can help designers to get better at these things. I am not detailing them out here because these are really dense topics and some brilliant authors have already written books on these subjects. Some of these books could be helpful-
Impossible to Ignore: Creating Memorable Content to Influence Decisions by Carmen Simon
Collaborative Intelligence: Thinking with People Who Think Differently by Dawna Markova
Mastering Collaboration: Make Working Together Less Painful and More Productive by Gretchen Anderson
Some final thoughts…
There is no way that designers should skimp on design craft. That still happens to be the most important thing to get your foot in the door. Without good hard skills, no designer can move forward in their career. The idea is to keep building core design craft skills, while also building skills in communication and collaboration so that designers can become more ‘complete’ designers and contribute to their organization as the best version of themselves.
