Designers, you have more power than you think! 3 powers designers should leverage when they are outnumbered
Being a designer in a cross-functional team can be challenging especially when you are the only designer in the team. There can be instances when decisions are made against design prototypes and ignore users needs or engineers refuse to build it in favour of a simpler coded solution.
Designers can leverage their skills and relationships to shift the dial so that the outcome is the right experience for the customer and the business;
User insights
Data
Collaboration
User insights
The primary job of a designer is to be the voice of the user and to know the pain points and workflows. The key element of this knowledge is being able to create a narrative that can be shared across the team and with stakeholders. If a Designer is there to evangelise for their users, they must learn how to preach to the choir.
Be thoughtful and intentional when talking through your rationale. Use every opportunity to talk about the why behind your design and include insights from users to justify the why.
Being Data-driven
Using data to drive your design decisions and to combat opinions is a no brainer. When you use data to drive your design decisions you create a space for fact and remove opinion and ambiguity. For example, using multi-variant testing to quickly understand which design version works best, quickly prevents personal opinion in making a decision as most of the time where there is a clear winner.
Collaboration
I like to describe the designer role to be the glue between engineering and product effortlessly translating and bringing together both to create interfaces that work for the user. This role of the translator is key to any cross-functional team and at the heart of translating is collaboration. Working closely with the different functions within the team helps others understand your design process and the why behind your design.
I’m a big fan of pairing with engineers, especially during discovery. I get them involved in note-taking and shadowing user research sessions so they can see and understand their users more. I typically rotate engineers to ensure they all get a chance to see and speak to users.
Involving your team through the design process breaks boundaries and shapes experiences more efficiently so that when final designs are presented there everyone is already onboard and attached to the rationale.
Leveraging these superpowers as a designer helps make it easier to influence your peers and also highlight the value of design by showing that design is so much more than making things ‘pretty’. What superpowers would you add to the list?
