There is a tendency with most creative people I know to aspire for the approval of peers. This is natural, as we are all insecure and desire encouragement from people we respect. But it is possible, and often the case, that our peers have different values to our true audience. Chasing the approval of peers can compromise the success of a creative project.
Musicians playing to musicians
To help illustrate the point – this type of conflict is clear within localised communities of musicians. I used to occasionally watch bands play at venues in Durban and I would imagine that what I noticed occurs elsewhere. I would guess that almost half the people in the audience were musicians themselves – they came to support friends or check out the competition. This led to the bands writing and performing with the primary goal of impressing each other. Songs ended up being too complicated and progressive to be ‘radio friendly’. Needless to say, few bands broke out of the local scene.
Negative influences in software design
I design web and mobile software. I elicit requirements, sketch ideas, build prototypes and design interfaces. Throughout the process, there are points at which the user experience can be compromised because of the desire to impress stakeholders other than the users themselves. Much has been said about User Centric Design from a methodology perspective, but not from the psychological or emotional perspective of the designers themselves.
Say I have a fixed time box of 2 days in order to deliver a design for a new interface. My clear goal is to make sure that the limited time I have is spent on addressing the user’s needs through my design. The following examples illustrate how influences from peers and other stakeholders can conflict with this goal.
Designing for designers
As a designer, I often feel inspired to include novel aspects in my designs that I’d hope to see mentioned on blogs, Twitter or generally earn me kudos. I also feel obliged to keep graphics pixel perfect and mark-up spotless. Although valuable, this time could often be better spent elsewhere.
Insecurity
I frequently run designs by fellow team members for their input. Many developers love seeing their code ‘bling’ on the font-end, and will often suggest elements that I would deem low priority considering time constraints. It is often difficult to oppose these suggestions without seeming arrogant or defensive. This is an issue of insecurity and designers need to be bold about their convictions.
Unfounded client input
Clients are usually the least well educated when it comes to what is important in a design. We recently purchased a hilarious poster from The Oatmeal, titled “How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell”. The comic does an excellent job of illustrating how input from a client can ruin a design. Standing up to inappropriate suggestions from clients can be very tricky. I try to make clients aware of these possible conflicts at the outset, clarifying that it is our job as designers to keep the users’ interests in mind.
Simply being conscious of these influences can help you to always keep the users’ goals in focus. Unfortunately though, certain personalities can make this very challenging.
Software development is human centric and heavily reliant on effective communication. I sometimes wonder if we shouldn’t have psychologists in our development teams.
