I recently hung out with some notable web designers at SXSWi. Afterward, I had to remind myself that fame is not synonymous with success.
“We’ve all been raised by television to believe that one day we’ll all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars — but we won’t.” –Tyler Durden (Fight Club)
The internet reinforces this idea. We seek validation in the number of comments we get on a blog post or by the size of our twitter following. Those with the largest following tend to work on highly publicized projects for exceedingly cool clients who seem to grant them utter creative control. Their design sensibilities inspire and instruct the masses. By all appearances, these people have deeply rewarding and successful careers and sometimes it feels like notoriety is the ultimate measure of that success.
Fame probably feels good, and it can be a powerful tool for change. But for the 99.9% of us who will never write a groundbreaking article for A List Apart or speak at FOWD, a successful and rewarding career is within grasp. Opportunities to do important work and make a difference abound, but seizing them requires some skills you won’t learn from nettuts.
A hott design is worthless if you can’t get buy-in from a group of executive stake holders. Perusing dribbble’s popular shots might inspire you and help you hone your craft but it doesn’t teach you anything about defending your designs, navigating corporate politics, or solving business problems. I realize that may not sound like what you signed up for. You’re a designer and those are icky business words. The truth is, if you want your designs to change things, you need a broader view of your profession.
Consider this quote from Robert Heinlein (I first read this on Zach Klein’s Blog):
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” –from Time Enough For Love
Craft is important, but it can’t stand alone. Creating real, lasting change means applying design thinking to business decisions. Following are a few quick thoughts on how creatives can gain a seat at the table.
Defending Design
Most design reviews spiral downhill when the conversation centers on taste. Ultimately, design is problem solving so it’s important that you and those reviewing your work decide on some problems the design should solve before you start designing. Taste is a factor (hopefully one you’ve been hired for), but if the conversation centers on design goals, then you have something more objective to appeal to.
Here’s a list of design goals from a recent project:
The design of the $clientname website should support the following concepts:
- $clientname is a highly-professional and disciplined organization.
- $clientname is credible and dependable – proven and ever-ready to meet the challenge at-hand.
- $clientname is inviting and accessible.
- $clientname provides lots of formal, traditional information in a friendly and contemporary way.
- The interface should be simple, bright, crisp, and eye-catching.
Now it’s okay if the client changes their mind. Instead of revisions coming as a request (or command) to add some lens flare and glitter, you can talk about why it should no longer be simple. When you guide the conversation, you move from becoming a pixel pusher to a trusted advisor.
Navigating Corporate Politics
If an organization you’re working with has departments/divisions/business units or the like, politics will probably effect the architecture of your website or application. Different departments have different agendas and they often want their agenda featured in places it doesn’t belong.
I ran into a classic example fo this when working on an intranet for a large law firm. Departmental initiatives were being crammed into their top-level navigation because of company politics. They were confusing meaningful way-finding with promotional content. I drew a quick sketch to restate the problem.
Once we agreed that those concepts were what would help attorneys find content most efficiently, we were able to talk about the most meaningful ways to promote the different departmental agendas. The wonderful thing about illustrating a problem with a sketch like this is that it enables people to recall a lot of concepts very quickly. As soon as a department started to jockey for navigation realestate again, we just had to point back to this picture. Instead of it being a CYA document that needed seven levels of sign-off, it became the big idea everyone rallied around.
Solving Business Problems
Practitioners are used to applying their thinking to predetermined requirements within a predefined scope of work. Design is often an after thought – a non-essential add-on. But design thinking can change entire businesses.
I used to work for a design consultancy that was acquired by a massive information storage company. Our small team was used to mid-sized projects, but the sales people for this cloud company were selling multiple seven or eight figure storage deals a year.
One of them stopped by our studio one morning and said, “I just sold a $25M deal, why on earth should I care about what you do?” Nobody answered him and he left. He was an ass, but his question nagged at me. If design was as important as I believed it was, he should’ve had a reason to care.
Later that day it occurred to me that his tune would’ve been different if he’d lost that deal. That company was looking at design as a consulting service, but was completely missing it as a must-have for their products (which was where the real money was). If the administrative tools for the storage hardware were so well designed that customers couldn’t bare the thought of switching over to the clunky competitor, how many more eight figure deals would that ass-clown sell? More importantly, if a company that large saw the benefit of great design to their bottom line, how much good could they do?
Resources
Initially, thinking like this didn’t come naturally to me (I was actually pretty adverse to it for a while), but I’ve had some great mentors and bosses to look up to who do this really well: @keithmjacobs, @kraemer, @jaredigital, and @stephenanderson to name a few. There are some great books that helped me cultivate some these soft skills along the way as well:
- Love is The Killer App by Tim Sanders
- The Back of The Napkin by Dan Roam
- Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds
- The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: the Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need by Daniel H. Pink
Fame and success are not synonyms – just like design and business are not antonyms. Excel in your craft and cultivate your ability to defend your work and apply it in a business setting. Invoking real change requires a broad view of what it means to be a designer. You’re made for more than you think you’re capable of.
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