Designing is not a profession but an attitude

László Moholy-Nagy

Vision in Motion

Over the many years I have worked as a designers I have had the fortune to come into contact with a lot of other designers’ processes. The thing about design and process is that, no matter how hard you try and streamline it, patten it, and make it efficient, it still boils down to what works for an individual person.

While we are a small studio at Design Commission, I’m constantly intrigued by how each designer in the studio has a very independent way of getting at the answer. I’ve noticed that some of the less-experienced designers are much more reliant on a process that comes as a result of formal education. It’s a lot more structured, which totally makes sense. It’s something that can be incorporated into a syllabus and replicated across a lot of students.

As designers begin to age and gain real-world experience, their approach seems to become more organic. Their tool sets shift to ones that work best for them. My business partner, Jay, can sit down in front of a blank Photoshop document and, in a matter of an hour or two, assemble what ultimately becomes a finished design–all without a potty break. That is what a good design process is capable of.

I find that I tend to float around a lot more from application to application to pen-and-paper and back to application. I’m a lot more interested in looking at other work samples or resources while, Jay, for comparison’s sake, seems to accumulate those points within his mind over time and pulls them out when needed.

The point of this all is to say that, as a design manager of sorts, there’s a great deal of importance on the balance between managing for efficiency and allowing each individual designer the time and space they need to apply their own process. This knowledge must come from time and experience with a group of people. It is just impossible for a designer to sit down at the start of a project and describe, in detail, the steps they will take to achieve success. Managers of the design process need to be aware of this and sensitive to its impact.

This awareness translates to a number of things but, ultimately, it’s about building room into the flow of a project, as well as the environment of the studio, so that each designer can work to their greatest potential. It is not the role of management to dictate these tools or the process by which they are used, but rather to establish a clear need and a desired outcome and then provide for the team as they need.

Design projects at our studio usually begin with a kick-of meeting of sorts, where the designer(s), developer(s), an account manager (usually myself) and the client all get together and talk. We discuss everything from the mundane scheduling details to conceptual frameworks and themes for the project.These meetings have a lot of purposes and, as much as I feel meetings can be a giant time suck, these ones usually tend to be pretty valuable. I use the word valuable instead of productive here because I don’t think there’s a lot of work accomplished during the meeting. What does happen in these meetings is a mixture of many intangible benefits.

To start off with, at a very basic level the kick-off ensures that we all understand the nature of the project in the same way. The problem with having dedicated project managers (PM) or account managers (AM) involved in design projects is that while the intermediary service they provide can reduce distraction for the rest of the team, the additional layer of communication they add often translates to miscommunications. It’s the child-hood game of Telephone all over agin. Many times, this miscommunication is at the onset of the project as goals, objectives, features and functionality are all being established in the name of defining a scope of work and budget. It’s impossible to involve the entire team in this process, especially if you plan on making any money on the project and a good PM will leave enough room in the project definition that things can shift a bit without jeopardizing its success. So, getting everyone together in the same room to talk about what’s been decided on is a little back-ass-wards, granted, but a reality of the process.

Secondly, these meetings establish a lot of the social dynamics of the project. Designer’s can see and hear the client and pick-up on nuances of the client. This helps everyone come to a better understanding of how we describe problems, relate issues or give praise. Also, if two team members are just not going to be compatible you can usually tell right-off-the-bat. If it’s tough to tell, they can probably work it out, but the few times I’ve been involved in project where two team members just didn’t see eye-to-eye it was pretty obvious from that first interaction. It then becomes the responsibility of the studio to reconfigure as need.

Finally, the kick-off meeting is a unique and valuable time to build enthusiasm for the project. Usually, these meetings are taking place right after contracts have been negotiated and signed. Money’s been discussed and often concessions have been made by both sides and so people are coming into the meeting with some minor battle scars. This hour or two meeting provides team members a great chance to heal the wounds and get everyone amped about the work ahead.This is, of course, easier said than done. It is, after all, work and no matter what designers entrpreneurs will tell you, they would rather be laying on the beach in Hawaii. But, by talking about potential and opportunity in the meeting, everyone has the chance to feel like they have contributed (important) and that there’s something to look forward to (again, important).In addition to these higher-level objectives for a successful kick-off, there are few best practices I’ve found:

1. Get everyone prepped. The odds of something going wrong during the meeting are greatly reduced if everyone knows how the project has been defined before hand.
2. Take lots and lots of notes. Write down everything–what was said, who said it, how it was responded too. So much of what will happen down the road will be dependent on this meeting and making sure it’s all documented will save you hours of pain.
3. Get those notes transcribed ASAP when the meeting is over. Wait an hour and you’ll forget 5% of what was said. Wait a day and you’ll forget 80%. Wait two days and you won’t bother transcribing at all. It may seem a little over-kill to walk out of a meeting and immediately start to transcribe those notes, but you’ll be hating it if you don’t.
4. Let designers be Designers. Designers are great at creating appropriate and focused experiences, but their real value in many situations is understanding a problem and finding a way to communicate it. Often times, people in the meetings walk in with pre-conceived notions of what this “thing” is going to be. As long as the designers are informed, they can provide recommendations to enhance the experience at a very high-level that will pay-off ten-fold.