Design on a deadline
Designers are often tasked with lofty goals on the outset of a project. Both from those setting business requirements to the designers themselves, excited to get started on something new.
The sky is the limit on a green field project, so ideas are grand and the vision of the product is magnificent. But then reality starts to set in and you realize that all those ideas need design work. And not just design in the thinking sense, I mean like actual pixels on screen design too. Research, prototyping, feedback, iteration… etc. AND — you have a deadline. After all, you’re in the business of helping to make your business more successful. You aren’t in the business of “design”. So while it’s great to think your design process has all the time and resources it needs, you have real world constraints that you need to work within.
Here are a few tips on working within deadlines, and how that can be a good thing.
If your process can’t adapt, it’s the wrong process
I struggle when I hear designers complain that they weren’t given enough time to fully flush out their ideas. “Management doesn’t believe it’s worthwhile” is something I hear often. Here’s the thing — management is juggling all the constraints in order to make a million decisions every day. Your challenge, as the designer, is to adapt your processes to work well under pressure and constraints. And that’s the challenge everyone else in the organization faces.
Work together with product managers, developers, marketers to find where you can help alleviate pressures on each other. Get people involved early so that they can identify roadblocks to your design intent, or make suggestions on what might make it better. You’ll become a better product team for it!
Use constraints as a design tool
Constraints add pressure. But they also have an immense benefit of helping make decisions for you. It forces you to address the critical problems you are trying to solve. Let me give you a practical example:
When designing bitHound, a code analytics tool that identified a variety of issues in a software project, I needed to devise a visual element that would identify these various issues. We needed this yesterday as the saying goes. Iconography was the immediate first choice, but there was a problem. We didn’t have time for me to design, or even search, for icons that would make an appropriate metaphor (I’m not a speedy chap either when it comes to icon design). So faced with this constraint, we turned to making typography the visual element. The would-be labels for the would-be icons became the hero of the visual element. It became a theme we carried throughout the product. It’s funny to think that something that became such a major theme of the product’s design language was born out of a constraint.
Use constraints as a way to eliminate design options. Rather than having to identify and evaluate each option, you can automatically discard those that are just not possible. It’s easier to make informed choices, when there are less choices to make.
Ship imperfections
You’ll need to ship imperfect work. You just will. You’ll need to get comfortable with that idea, but you’ll also have to make the tough call on what winds up shipping. What is the most crucial part of your design that can’t be sacrificed? What can you let slide? And while this sounds like admitting defeat, it’s not. Iterate. Fix that flaw when things slow down post-launch. Defeat would be missing an important deadline altogether because you couldn’t make the tough call on what ships. Also, remember that while you think a flaw is a glaring error that the world will point out when it goes live, most users probably won’t even notice it.
Start seeing imperfections as just early iterations. When they are out in the wild, you might just discover they actually aren’t all that imperfect.
Working under deadlines is just a fact of life, so make sure you adopt processes and methodologies that help you weather the storms. Use downtime to fine tune processes so you’re ready for the next one. Embrace the constraints and use them to your advantage.
Carlos Perez is a product strategy consultant that helps product teams work more effectively across design, development and marketing. Contact him today at carlos@practicalblend.com.
