What do you never want to hear a designer say again?
You work with talented designers, you love talented designers, or you are a talented designer. You couldn't live without them, but ...sometimes they say things that just drive you crazy. If you could wave a magic wand and remove one sentence or phrase from your designer's repertoire, what would it be?
[Note: I'm collecting these for a Core Conversation I'll be leading at SXSW -- but I won't attribute your answer unless you want me to. So be honest!]
Good Answers (1)
Joy F
process improvement is ALL about people
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Trust me.
More Answers (48)
Robin C
Project leader and Museums and Institutions Consultant
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"It turns out that the great scheme you liked so much will come in well over budget" (ie: if you do go for it and break the budget it's not going to be our fault, even though we knew the budget when we proposed the scheme in the first place; if you don't go for the costlier scheme we'll know you're a cheapskate; are you really going to settle for second best; etc, etc).
Steve W
Senior Copywriter at Aspen Marketing Services
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Okay, I'm a copywriter so I work closely with designers all the time. The thing I hate to hear ... and I've heard it a BUNCH ... is "WATCH OUT" as they drop the Exacto knife and it flies point first toward your foot. Granted, it has helped to hone my keen ninja skills, but come on!
Robert J
Program Manager | Sr. IT Specialist | IT Architect
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"I did the best I could - there's only so much you do with...".
The Critiquing Designer: This guy/girl walks around talking about how much they know - and then hands me some half-assed design I could have throw together in 20 minutes and uses the excuse "There is only so much you can do...". Hey - If you can tell me what's wrong with something ... you can fix something. If you know how to fix it ... why didn't you? If you didn't fix it - and that's your job - why am I paying you?
"I couldn't get a feel for it's essence." - Is another great one. This is the product empath. They seem to feel the need to get some kind of Vulcan Mind Meld quality going with the product to "feel it's energy." (Yes I have actually had those words used on me... rolling my eyes.) In the words of the Immortal Arlen Dean Snyder, who when overhearing another actor say, "Whats my motivation?" said, "A PAYCHECK! Now Read Your Damn Lines!".
The products energy - it's "feng shui" - it's "mojo" - it's "<place undefined cool term for the ephermeral here>" will not matter if you don't hit deadlines and get bills paid. It'll be the coolest product ever that never sold and everyone will be without a job. I was once told by one of the top designers in the Web industry what his secret was ... "I don't think about it. I ask myself if I like it and if it sucks - I don't do it." is pretty much what he told me. He didn't need feng shui, he didn't need to "feel" a product. It was really simple. He either liked his own work or he didn't. That's all I ask of anyone - I don't expect miracles - but I do expect you give me your honest work.
Those are my two trigger points with designers.
Steph M
Historic preservation & heritage education consultant
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"Just tell me what you want and I'll make that."
I don't know what I want, exactly. I know what I need, generally, and what it should do, and sometimes I know what I don't want. But I'm coming to a designer because I have no idea how to create something that hits the mark. I need someone with professional experience, training, creativity, and skill who can figure that out; that's why I hired a designer. Ask me whatever questions you need to get to a concept/design, but don't expect me to say, "I'd like to have a logo that includes these three elements, using these two colors and these two fonts." If I knew that much, I'd start up Illustrator and do it myself.
"Here are your four concepts" (when really it's four versions of the same concept).
This is my #1 complaint about designers: they'll have one idea that they fall in love with, and then they'll just give me different versions of the same thing. No thanks. Ideally, I'd have three designers working on every project at the concept stage, and then once someone came up with a concept that I liked, I'd set all three of them to work doing variations of that concept. I think if you're dealing with a single designer, you're always going to run into this problem, unless you find someone who understands that there are many ways to approach a problem, and who tries to provide you with multiple solutions.
While I do understand the importance of "white space" it drives me nuts when designers use it as a way to justify removing key functionality that really needs to be on the page... saying something like "well it just doesn't look good, let's get rid of this..."
On a joking note, you should check out the video on this link. It might be fun to play a couple clips during your presentation...
Links:
This is fun! Okay, my work is in information application development and human computer interaction. This work is based on systematically collecting and validating data about what users need to do. Given this, the one phrase guaranteed to cause my eyes to roll is hearing anyone involved in a project say, "I think users want..."
Adam N
Sr. Director, Product at LinkedIn
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In general, when I see a suggestion shot down due to an oblique reference to a narrowly defined design strategy, it's a little maddening. Typically, these strategies are generated by looking at a broad set of backwards-facing use cases, but rarely take into account future directions and/or feature needs.
Rather than treated as an absolute, when a new application is considered, it's very important for designers to ask the question:
"Does this application fit within the confines of the analysis behind this strategy, or is this application a new use case that should lead to a refinement or replacement of the existing strategy?"
Yes, James, I am referring to the infamous "Button Strategy". :)
After sitting in a room together critiquing designs, many of my colleagues (who are also my friends) seem to enjoy saying, "Let's massage the design and meet back in a couple of days for review." I don't know why but this phrase just makes my skin crawl. I have this mental image of them slathering oil on their mockups and rub, rub, rubbing the bad design elements away until the prototype is all relaxed, refreshed and glowing for the next meeting.
William P
Software Development Consultant and Software Developer
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Two that always get me:
"Oh, just go ahead and build it and I'll do some design when you're done." Best case: I get a superficial, put-some-lipstick-on design. Worst case: they see the final product and want to make sweeping changes that require substantial delays. Either way, the user loses.
"Tell me all of the features you want, and then I'll go off and spend [painfully long period] designing them. When I'm done, you can start building." This approach might have worked a decade or two ago, but it's foolishness on today's Internet. Iterative approaches mean we can respond to our users and keep one step ahead of our competitors. Trying to stop the world so designers (or anybody) can perfect grand visions comes at a terrible cost. Much better to start a little rough and continually improve.
That said, I do indeed love talented designers, and I hear both of these much less than I used to.
If I could make anything go away, it would be any reference to "above the fold". I realize that there are limitations to what can be shown on screen at any given time, and I love designers that are thoughtful about layout and placement. But in today's world of mobile devices, desktop computers, laptops, and internet-enabled refrigerators, where do you draw the line?
I'm much more interested in how people identify the needs of their users and their business objectives, and then provide a clear call to action or obvious next step. Picking some arbitrary page length and shoveling everything actionable in above it just worsens most situations.
Eileen B
IT Professional, Information Security Quality Assurance Operations & Administration / President, CMU SEI LI SPIN
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Hi James,
Great question! Just wanted to thank you for asking it, I own a firm of designers and developers and this is great feedback for them and me :)
Eileen
Doug H
Creative and Fun Strategic Leader with expertise in financial management, customer service, and inspiring teams
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Oh, that can't be done.
Oh, but my idea is much better (especially when the design is the exact opposite of what was requested).
In other words, I don't like it when designers can't take instruction because they have their own ideas. This is actually quite natural for a design personality, but it's still frustrating.
Marc A
CTO at FAMEocracy
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"Well you never told me it was supposed to be REALLY good!"
"Thanks for the user feedback on my design, but those participants aren't the target audience." What's annoying about this response is that the feedback is not taken to heart and the design is really no longer "user-centered." While the user researcher has the obligation to ensure they recruited correctly and didn't overtly affect the scenario under which the design was tested, the designer has the obligation to take user feedback to heart and be willing to iterate and improve on their initial design, no matter how much heart, soul or logic they put into it initially.
My Designer said..... "Your database doesn't work with my design".....
"that will never work" - I would rather they make it work
Kavita B
Visual Poet, Design Consultant, Founder of UrbanPeacock.com (Currently on an Unplugged Creative Sabbatical )
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Interesting. It may be helpful to consider team perspectives as well as user perspectives as we work hand in hand in creating next generation solutions.
It's clear from the comments here further education is needed in helping Silicon Valley Business/ Technical Schools understand what a designer's role is in the problem solving process within the internet environment.
It would be great to have folksget together and discuss how they approach problem solving in general. You'll quickly notice there are varying approaches and if we respect each discipline at the table, we'll get much further in a shorter period of time. This in the end will better serve both the business's bottom line (faster development cycles with fewer revisions) and serve our users with more usable, well thought out designs.
My initial response to the concept of 'agile development' was that oh no, here we go again, short term thinking winning over long term thinking. The ideal solution of course is a balance between the two, but being 'agile' appears to be a lot of quick, band-aid, feature driven development which after a while is not going to serve the user in the long term. Agreed that being competitive requires faster and faster time to market, but also think about scalability and your infrastructure as you add, add, add features... that's where designers come into the picture to help.
If a designer asks for more time, they aren't being lazy, they are trying to figure out the variables in the potential solutions so that you don't have to deal with regression and you can truly layer on additional features in a way that will not break the system or the interaction behavioral patterns being established from a well thought out master plan, which if done right, will be flexible enough to accommodate future features.
The simplest way to achieve this is to really have business objectives clearly spelled out before design begins. If you hear complaints from designers, or anybody on a team, it usually means folks aren't sure of what they are aiming for. Understanding team dependencies is important, and can be tackled at different speeds depending on the size of the team/ organization.
A strong design leader is diplomatic and cognizant of the team dynamics and able to communicate effectively requirements and trust his/ her team that he/ she hired the right folks and to trust everybody is doing their best to make the internet an amazing experience.
Glad that the question was asked, as this is the first step in fostering change for a more unified team. The more in synch a team is, the faster they will move.
Best,
Kavita
(Design veteran with over 20 years experience in multiple facets of the design industry, with the last 13 on the Internet)
Links:
Is all of this stuff really necessary? If we could just get rid of {insert name of essential feature} the design would work SO much better.
What intrigues me about most of these answers is that they all seem to come *after* the opportunities for planning and communication. So... if there was a breakdown along the line, is it all on the designer? Usually not.
That said, I don't want to miss out on the fun. :) The flip side of Preston's comment about white space is the maddening request that subsequently finds its way to the writer: "We need more content."
Using more words for a weak design, bad UI or a flawed product idea is putting lipstick on a pig.
Any kind of shutting down ideas, especially if there's time to do some iteration, drives me nuts... "That won't work" is the classic. Another is a false invocation of precedent in order to avoid trying something, e.g. "That solution would be non-standard".
Joseph M
Senior Systems Engineer at Roche Tissue Diagnostics (formerly Ventana Medical Systems)
Fun question!
How about "It's a known issue."? Or "It'll never break or go wrong!"?
"That is NOT possible". Prefaced by a, "We don't read requirement documents, they inhibit our creativity".
Jeff J
NPD Process Consultant
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Any sentence that begins with "I thought...", "Didn't we...", "As I recall...", "That was not...", "When did..." and "Who was...". These all indicate a lack of the absolute clarity that is essential to produce a winning product. Phrases such as these show the need for improvements to the communication of objectives and are not purely the responsibility of the designer; they involve the entire development team and it's management/leadership. The requirements must be crisp, agreed upon and thoroughly communicated or the results will be unpredictable.
1. Now, what is this product again?
2. When is it due? Can I get copy tomorrow?
3. Do I have to put in a graph/chart?
4. Can you cut copy so I can make the picture fill 2/3rds of the page?
5. You didn't include a sidebar, so I wrote one myself.
"We spent a lot of money licensing this design/scheme/template/artwork from CorporationZ. We understand that neither you nor our users like or can use this design/scheme/template/artwork, however we can't change it to something similar but better because CorporationZ might sue us. Also, we are paying exorbitant yearly licensing fees to continue using CorporationZ's content."
I hate when designers say "I dont have time for innovation."