“Oh! I heard you are a designer, graphic designer right?. You seem to draw lines, boxes & circles and fill colors to them, isn’t it?. Yeah! it’s very simple yaar”. This is what one of my old friend whom I met in Bangalore told me. It’s quite common to see these kind of responses everywhere.
A designer in an IT Company:
It’s not only a common man, but many doesn’t understand the process of design even in an IT company. Reason being they are not into making designs like Ad Agencies and Design Studios. They only need designs to make the software applications look aesthetic & appealing.
A formula for successful design lies here:
Clear Requirement/Objective + Freedom + Optimum Time = Creative(innovative) & Productive Output
This formula not only for design but also implies for many professions which needs creativity. Sadly one or more of this are in scarcity in many organizations/processes.
In a typical IT company, designer has to visualize a design for 6 intended audiences in layers, they are:
- Creative Lead – Supervises and approves the design task
- Project Manager – Supervises and approves the project
- Client Delivery Head / Director (Optional sometimes) – Approves the project & delivers it to the client.
- Client – Organization / person who’s taken project from another organization / person to get it done offshore(India/China).
- Client’s Client / Client’s Customer – Organization / person who needs solution / product / service done
- End-User – People for whom product/solution addressed for and are often considered optional.
Satisfying all of them will only make a design concept successful. Many times it happens like you make a perfect design that suits end user requirement, but your manager reject it at first stage saying the color scheme he personally didn’t liked. Don’t you call a designer a genius who works in this complex type of setup. By the time a design passes through all these layers and reaches End-User, this has gone for numerous iterations and changes after which the primary objective what a designer has tailored would’ve gone for a toss.
Common issues while working with Non-Creative Managers:
It’s quite common in any IT company that a designer will be directly reporting to manager of a project. One will not get a person to work under whom is actually into design/creative industry like Advertising & Design Studio. Here manager is from a software development background which means non-creative. Even sometimes, one will get a chance to get to work under creative project managers, but it depends from organization to organization and from projects to projects. The common issues are:
- He will not be given enough requirement & contents before starting design
- He will be usually told to do a design initially so that it can be changed later entirely
- Even sometimes one will be told that to “Do something”.
- If you have a great idea, you feel it’s going make a difference and your manager doesn’t understand it. It’s a waste.
- There is no Out-Of-Box concept. If it’s there, ask your manager which Box.
- Creative independence & creative risk are the terms your manager doesn’t understand. If you use it, they’ll think you are making a show-off.
- Luckily color schemes are usually given, unfortunately are of bad combinations. Sometimes no color will be given and told to do either in Light color or Dark color. As per design principle, a good design will be a combination of suitable light & dark color contrasts.
- Task schedule will be given only for the design task execution. Time for planning, research, visualizing etc; are not included in schedule.
- If you are sitting quiet, sketching and visualizing your upcoming design, you are wasting your time in thinking something stupid. It’s preferred that you do design first and think later.
- Designers’ are usually thought as different type of developers(software engineers).
- A “UI Prototype Design” are usually called as “Prototype Code”.
- Most of creative websites are blocked through network firewall. Because they consume lots of internet bandwidth.
- You will be emphasized on your efficiency in how you can use the tool rather than what best you can do using that tool.
- In their knowledge, “Creativity” only means ability to match & play with colors. Knowledge of Art, Aesthetics, Flavours, Typography, Photography, Trend etc; are considered as something “special” and not needed.
What designer wants?
- Like above formula, provide clear requirement. Requirement for designer is entirely different than a requirement for a developer(Software Engineer). Both types of requirements(creative & functional) are needed to plan navigation along with visual design.
- Freedom on work provides passion on work, which leads to innovation and also gives a sense of ownership. Once a great man said “When passion and skills are put together, expect a masterpiece”.
- Providing optimum time will make him plan, research, visualize, and execute task efficiently. If stringent time is given one or many of them may suffer.
- Avoid multiple iterations on a single design. Because a designer will sketch a aesthetic design for the intended user at initial stage itself. Each change will actually deviate the design from its initial appeal. Sometimes these iterations let the design refine to the user & client needs. At most times it ruins.
- Providing all required primary & secondary tools to make an “idea” into “reality” efficiently. For example “Adobe Photoshop” as primary tool and “KPT”, “Alien Skin” and other third party applications as secondary tools.
- Kindly consider them as special species. If they have a better way to doing things, let them do. Don’t avoid them since you don’t know about it. May be its worth to take risk.
