Wisdom for a Young UX Designer
From a design professor.
Build a toolbox for seeking empathy.
It is crucial for graphic designers to understand their audience and tailor their designs accordingly. Failing to consider the intended audience can result in ineffective or even offensive designs.
Pepsi's “Live for Now” ad campaign featuring Kendall Jenner received widespread backlash for its tone-deaf portrayal of social justice activism.
Instead of addressing a design brief head-on, develop user profiles and utilize the MoSCoW method to articulate what a design must have, should have, could have, and won’t have.
Don’t ignore branding strategies.
Most companies have established brand guidelines to ensure consistency in their visual branding. Ignoring these guidelines can lead to designs that do not align with an organization’s branding strategy.
In 2006 McDonald’s rebranded multiple times and strayed too far from the company’s established branding, causing confusion for consumers and money wasted on the rebranding process.
Once a branding strategy is developed, branding guidelines help designers develop a unified style across all user experiences of the brand. Young designers sometimes want to throw all their creative energy into something exciting and new, but understanding these guidelines and using them to fulfill the organization/user needs is often more important.
This example above from YouTube shows designers not only how to use its logo, but how not to use its logo. A branding strategy is a philosophy behind the guidelines which ensures a consistent clarity of the brand’s message or meaning, which over time makes it more memorable.
Understand the power of simplification.
It can be tempting to add as many design elements as possible to make a design stand out. However, too many elements can create visual clutter and distract from the overall message and meaning.
The 2012 London Olympics logo was widely criticized for its complex and cluttered design, which made it overly complicated and clashing design elements.
“Simple” designs can be subtly complex, like Paul Rand’s logo for Apple:
Don’t just design, proofread.
It is important to proofread all designs before they are released to the public. Typos and spelling errors can be embarrassing and damage the reputation of the designer and the company’s brand. In other words, always think beyond form and function to meaning, message, and intention.
The infamous “EAT MOR CHIKIN” sign on a Chick-fil-A restaurant, which was intended to read “EAT MORE CHICKEN,” is a well-known example of the importance of how misspelling can distract consumers from the message.
Take a step back from visual details.
Visual details, such as text alignment, typeface selection, or precision with color have an enormous impact on the overall look and feel of a design but the function of a design is equally as important. Young designers often spend their time refining how something looks and develop a “tunnel vision” for their craft. User testing, persona development, and designing from an empathetic perspective of the end user can ensure a design doesn’t end up failing in how it actually works or functions.
In 2000, the butterfly ballot was used in Palm Beach County, Florida and caused more than 2,000 Democratic voters to vote by mistake for Reform candidate Pat Buchanan, a number larger than George W. Bush’s certified margin of victory in the state of Florida.
To avoid incidents such as this, conduct thorough User Experience (UX) research which includes user testing to understand how the design functions and performs. Never accept the first design as complete; instead, iterate, iterate, iterate until the design looks and performs well under pressure and against multiple use case scenarios.
Don’t copy other graphic designers’ work.
It is important for graphic designers to create original work and avoid copying the work of others. Plagiarism is not only unethical, but it can also result in legal consequences.
The 2017 redesign of Airbnb’s logo, which featured a new logomark is a notable example of taking ideas from other designers.
This one is simple… don’t take this shortcut because it’ll ruin your career.
Always consider the context.
The context in which a design will be viewed is important to consider. A design that works well on a website may not translate well to print or vice versa. Always integrate responsive designs into the design process to meet diverse user needs, especially in the digital age. If users aren’t met on their preferred devices, business opportunities can be lost to others companies who are making designs that adapt to different contexts.
It took until 2013 for the New York Times newspaper to improve its poor readability on mobile devices, which is where the majority of its readers access their content.
Today, this is much easier with design programs such as Adobe XD or Figma which help designers envision their work on different devices, but remember the fact that if a potential user can’t use your design on their preferred device this might mean a loss of opportunity.
Perceive the design process as an evolving toolkit.
A perfect design process doesn’t exist; only a range of knowledge, skills, and abilities can be learned and applied to various projects which require design processes. There are numerous books and designers who teach their design process to others and while they appear crystal clear and successful, a good designer is always learning and practicing to continuously improve and develop their own processes. Instead of formalizing a process that can be repeated, become a connoisseur of these processes by going to the library, going to conferences, and learning online by reading, watching videos, or taking classes. Most of all, integrate what you learn into your practice over a long period of time to build expertise.
“Learn continually. There’s always “one more thing” to learn.” — Steve Jobs
Develop a hunger for feedback.
Receiving feedback on one’s work can be difficult, but it is an important part of the design process. It is important for designers to be open to feedback and willing to make changes to their designs based on that feedback. Embracing feedback means having a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed mindset… Stanford professor Carol Dweck Ph.D. wrote a great book I encourage all of my students to read which helps them have a mindset for perceiving themselves as constantly changing and growing person who perceives challenges and setbacks as opportunities instead of blocks in the creative process. When a growth mindset is embraced, feedback becomes a mechanism for improving, growing, and evolving with relationships between colleagues becoming a constructive and collaborative process where each sharpens one other.
“Becoming is better than being”
— Carol Dweck, Ph.D.
