|
By Ellen Bledner, ChoiceVendor
Designers make decisions ... in the face of uncertainty, of constraints imposed by medium, time, and fiat, constantly balancing immensely complex systems of interwoven attributes and elements.
... it takes at least as much
time to communicate your design to other people as it does to generate and
plan the solution
... Spend some time producing a few landmark deliverables on each project. They’ll serve as reference points for you and the rest of the team.
... Begin with use cases and scenarios: make decisions about what the product needs to let people do—and you get the team to agree on that part. From there, it tends to be easier to figure out what features make sense and what features are most important, and you typically get reasonable agreement on what features are needed first and which ones are nice-to-haves.
... If you are trained in the science of Human-Computer Interaction and
in the art of design; if you are intuitive and emotive and empathetic; if you
are logical and creative, artistic and mathematical; you are a designer and
you need to be calling the shots.
...
One of the greatest blocks to good design is the tension between authoritative
decision-making and the humility and creativity that are at the
core of our profession. You cannot be a good designer or engineer unless
you are always trying to solve problems amidst new constraints.
... No matter how much you believe in the design, if it doesn’t
work, you have to let it go.
... Designers always
have to make decisions with imperfect data, and very often with inadequate
data...
... start thinking of coworkers as your “team.” This means that
you are all mutually obliged to one another to cover your turf to the best
of your abilities.
...One of the other dangers when you collaborate closely with someone
who has overlapping skills is that you can end up compromising too much
just to get a decision made: this person really wants the picture on the left,
you think it should be on the right, so you say “let’s do half and half,” or
“let’s put it in the middle.”...
| 
[ 
