Overcome resistance and do the work
Designers are the positive aspiration in a project. We are the ones that create something new. Something unique. We’re able to connect the dots to solve business problems. The rest of the business team can’t wait to see what we’ve come up with. If we’re lucky to be involved early, we deliver a great vision for the product.
After that the resistance comes. The designer dragon raises its head – the designer becomes paralysed, goes in circles, creates more revisions to the design brief, embarks on an endlessly repeating track of research, all meticulously ‘wireframed’ and ‘rationaled’. No traction is gained, no progress made.
That’s where Agile is different – working in an agile environment gives the designer an opportunity to overcome this resistance and just do the work.
This presentation will describe strategies and techniques to overcome resistance and do the work, including:
- Just enough design: It’s crucial to know when to stop designing and start talking with customers and developers. This isn’t about sketching (although that can be the medium), it’s about having enough project awareness that the work is done and it’s time to move onto the next thing.
- Designer / Developer pairing: Saddling up next to a developer doesn’t mean you need to learn jQuery. What you do need is to understand and appreciate technical constraints and make small design iterations on the fly.
- Card annotations: Getting on the same page with developers means knowing how much design is required on each card. A simple card annotation system lets the team know if design is needed and how much time you are spending in iteration.
- UI Bootstrap and pattern companion: We use a simple UI bootstrap to get moving quickly, inspired by the Twitter bootstrap. It’s not a style guide, but a shortcut to the current thinking on UI patterns.
- Culture of calling bullshit (trust): The hardest, but the best way to overcome resistance in the long term, is to have a trusting culture where everyone (developers, customers, designers) feels OK to voice opinions, change their mind and admit when they’re wrong.
For each, Andrew will discuss how Cogent overcame each point of resistance on a recent project for Melbourne Business School – Thread.edu.au.