Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Chris Jeong

How often as designers do we feel under appreciated for our blood, sweat and tears poured in to a design? If your professional experience has been anything like mine, it’s all the damn time.

“I stayed up til 2 am yesterday perfecting that mockup… WTF do you mean let’s revisit it later?”

“Why wasn’t any of of this brought to our attention when we were validating our lower fidelity wires during team meetings?”

“I just finished user testing… Why are we taking it out of scope!?”

Sound familiar? {eye twitch}

If this sounds like you, you’re not alone. Don’t take these as anything to do you with your proficiency as an effective designer. Rather, revel in the fact your are approaching designer nirvana. These kinds of events chip away at our ego, optimism toward the product, and mental capacity for dealing with any more changes. With every passing day, a voice should grow louder and louder inside of you that says “F*ck all these changes… I’m not wasting anymore time for these a-holes” When this voice has gotten to loud too ignore, you’ve reached designer nirvana.

In designer nirvana we feel no pain. We feel no joy. All there’s left is time and more time for other things is the ultimate goal isn’t it?

As designers we (are supposed to) listen to our research teams, sales folks, and management. When we hear them talk about problems and possible solutions, our gears turn inside our head and we have a visceral reaction to reach for a design tool with urgency. This is normal. This is what makes us designers, right?

This is the point where most designers, myself included, go awry. Next time, instead of firing up a sketch file, open up Word and document some requirements. These should dive pretty deep in to what the problem and solutions could be.

Here’s a good article on how to write a good PRD. Although I’d say go a little deeper to reduce wiggle.
http://ift.tt/2cMBlyO

(Pro tip: work with others on this)

Words are funny things… As concise as they can be, everyone processes things differently and there will be misunderstandings. Whenever I can get people in a room together, I like to review requirements that pertain to the folks there and clarify any question marks that I or they may have. An easy and effective way to know you are in alignment, is to repeat in your own words what the other person has said.

Never start designing anything until you fully understand the problem and the team’s wholistic approach to solving it. Doing this will give you the foundation you need so you aren’t waste time designing the wrong things and to really show off your creativity.

Seriously Wasting Time — A Product Designer’s Story was originally published in Prototyping: From UX to Front End on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Seriously Wasting Time — A Product Designer’s Story

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