4 Strategies for Working With Designers Without Killing Each Other

Working as a designer in an advertising agency can be challenging as well as stressful and it is almost inevitable your opinions of design will not necessarily be received with open arms by everyone.

Many designers have different methods of working. Some work to a brief and some will design first and think about the workings afterwards. This article explains how you should work with designers on a project.

Get the right designer on board with your project

The one luxury we don’t have is the choice of selecting which designer we want to work on bringing our ideas to life. However, on a rare occasion you may have this choice so make it wisely. All UXers should have a comprehensive roster of professional designers that they use who are UX friendly. This list should include designers that they can call upon at short notice or when the need arises. Certain projects require certain skills and certain companies require the same designer for their projects.  If you are in a position to influence the choice of designer for a project then be ready with your portfolio of hot designers.

Don’t just throw wireframes over the fence

Occasionally you may end up working on a project where the timeframe is so compressed that you have no time for wireframes. When this happens it means you spend most of your time on the phone talking with the designer. Your conversations are based around the interface, where elements should be placed and exactly how the site should function.  As a general rule of thumb this isn’t good practice. However, you might just be surprised at the end result when you have a fully functional and perfect website that everyone is happy with.

You will often find many agencies are similar in structure in the sense all designers will be given a stick of wireframes and told to execute on them. What you have as the end result is one of two things. A site that looks as pretty as the wireframes version or a site that is very loosely based on the UX design. Designers need to be involved right from the beginning as this will prevent any misunderstandings when it comes to wireframes.  Once you have managed to get some wireframes together you need to speak with your designer and ask him or her to mock up some visual designs. This will enable you to work together and revisit anything that needs to be rethought.

Give designers space to do their thing

Why do people choose design as a profession? The answer is because they want to express themselves creatively by manipulating colours and shapes while having a whole load of fun doing it. Some designers like to work with information architects while others don’t because they feel an information architect comes in and takes away the designers glory. However, you will find some designers like to work with information architects because they find it much easier to work off of wireframes as it makes their job that much easier.

Designers who adopt this attitude want to have fun and new and interesting designs make them happy, so where possible always include a design centric section on sites that warrant it. This is when the information architect can sit and take a back seat to the design work. The golden rule here is respect what your designer does to create something stunning because if you do they are more likely to respect your needs in creating something that is usable.

Never underestimate the importance of design

‘Beautiful design makes people happy’ – Don Norman. The backbone of any good visual design has to be good UX design, yet one cannot exist without the other. If a designer comes to you and overrides the design work you have done because they are not happy with the aesthetic look then sit down and take on board what they are saying because the designer is right. If a designer and UXer work coherently together then the end result means the users are the winners because they have a site that is functional and easy to interact with.