Frequent vs. infrequent designers—and the tools designed for each one of them
Not every designer is an expert in every tool.
A few days ago I came across this fantastic post by Chris Siebenmann on the concept of frequent versus infrequent developers.
Here’s an excerpt:
“Frequent developers, in the context of a language are people who routinely work with code or programs written in that language. When you’re a frequent developer, you naturally develop expertise in that language’s operation and often a development environment for it, because you use it often. You know the commands, you remember their options (or at least the ones that you need), you’ve run into some of the somewhat obscure corners and things that can go wrong. You know your way around things. You’ll naturally learn and master even relatively complex procedures.” —Chris Siebenmann
Sounds pretty familiar, right?
Turns out the same concept can be easily applied to design.
Frequent designers are people who routinely design for a certain platform (apps or websites or VR or chatbots or any other) and using a certain design tool (Sketch or Principle or Illustrator and so on). They know that platform’s conventions, best practices, references, dos and don’ts. They have learned that tool’s shortcuts, have installed a series of plugins and extensions, and have developed agility and efficiency when operating that software.
Because they use that tool quite often, expanding their toolset to include adjacent plugins and extensions makes a lot of sense. Anything that will increase their efficiency is worth taking a look. They quickly become experts in that platform or tool’s ecosystem, and their productivity rises up quite spectacularly.
On the other hand, infrequent designers are more generalists. They have created a few apps, landing pages, prints, visual identities, illustrations. Because they are only occasionally designing for each of these types of projects, they don’t maintain expertise in the finer details of the platform. They of course know the basics, and they can easily look up “iPhone X screen size in pixels” when they are about to start a new iOS mobile app, for example. They have less expertise in the unusual cases, and they have to re-learn complex procedures (“how to use multiple drivers in Principle”) every time they are needed.
But that also means infrequent designers are less likely to install all the apparatus that come with a certain software (e.g. Sketch plugins) or to set up an entire workflow around building for a certain platform (e.g. using Abstract for version control of large UI projects). From Chris Siebenmann: “They get hit on both sides compared to frequent developers [designers]; they’re less familiar with the software so working on it takes longer, and they use the language much less so the same amount of absolute time spend on additional software is proportionally much higher. (…) Infrequent developers [designers] usually do not have the halo of tools that frequent developers [designers] do, and mostly stick to the basics (and as a result they miss out on various things).”
A missed opportunity for design tools?
Our industry is clearly divided when it comes to design tooling, and there are a lot of great conversations happening around that topic. In a rush to quickly become the designer’s favorite tool, players like InVision, Sketch, Figma and Adobe XD are aggressively experimenting different strategies to acquire and retain new customers.
In that process, it’s pretty natural for those companies to focus on their expert users —the designers who know all the shortcuts, use all the extensions, and who are deeply involved in that tool’s particular community. It makes business sense: the deeper someone is rationally and emotionally involved with one of these tool’s ecosystems, the less likely they are to migrate to another one. Expert users are the people ultimately advocating for how powerful the tool is, and encouraging other designers to give it a try.
These tools focus on the frequent designers.
The I-have-29-Sketch-plugins-installed users.
But at the same time, focusing too much on frequent designers can be a missed opportunity.
Nobody who is trying Sketch for the first time will have all the plugins installed. Not everyone who is testing out Adobe XD is an expert in Illustrator as well. These tools are proud and should — yes — be celebrating the ecosystem they have built, but they also have to remember people don’t go from newbies to experts overnight. By assuming a tool is as powerful as the totality of its ecosystem, some of these companies might run the risk of neglecting the very specific components that cause pain for infrequent designers.
And maybe there are more infrequent designers in our industry than one might think.
