Designers are very strange creatures. Our minds wander and we are always trying to think of the next great innovation. We’re actually a lot like surfers, who sit for hours on their boards, staring out into the vast ocean waiting for that perfect wave. Occasionally, a surfer will grab a decent wave and ride it in. Usually just to make sure they can still surf properly or try a new trick. Designers do the same thing. We’ll grab at projects that don’t necessarily excite us all that much but we’ll still do it. The reasons usually varie from designer to designer. Sometimes it’s for the money, the practice, the hopeful thrill and sometimes it’s just related to boredom.
Regardless of your reasons, we should always try to do our best. Whether it’s a redesign of a personal brand like I did with my site or a complete branding project for a new startup staying focused and applying our best effort is key to getting better. One of my personal goals when working on any project is that it has to be better than the last thing I did. I attempt to use each project as a learning tool that I can then apply to the next project I work on. Sometimes that’s hard whether it’s having to bend your designs and principles to your clients needs or there are just too many constraints.
No matter what the situation is I always ask myself if ‘I had to show this design to Steve Jobs or Dieter Rams would it pass their quality test?’ If the answer is Nope then it’s back to the drawing board to iterate until I can proudly say YES. Beyond this question, I also review Dieter Rams “10 Commandments of Design“. Like a lot of designers, I’ve gravitated to these remarkable principles over the years and have found that by following them, you can actually improve your chances of nailing a solid user experience. If you aren’t familiar with the 10 commandments, here they are:
- Good design is innovative
- Good design makes a product useful
- Good design is aesthetic
- Good design helps a product to be understood
- Good design is unobtrusive
- Good design is honest
- Good design is durable
- Good design is consistent to the last detail
- Good design is concerned with the environment
- Good design is as little design as possible
You’ll notice that there is nothing in there saying that you need to have moving parts or flashy elements. It brings you back to the primary focuses of any design – the content and the context. Dieter Rams initially wrote these commandments with industrial product design in mind but I think they translate to any medium of design. As designers, we are truly just finding new ways to enhance content and make it easier for people to obtain and understand. Far too often, we lose that perspective and want to use the latest design trend just because we can. Instead we should be litmus testing each design element to these principles to determine if it is right for the project. Just like surfers judge the quality of a wave by the way it breaks, the current, the swells and the wind. We need to focus on the content and principles of design that enhance that content rather than distract from it.
###Bugs hurt
Sadly, what happens when we don’t stay focused is that mistakes begin to bleed into our work. For example, take iOS7. Before this significant upgrade, iOS was one of the most bug free platforms out there. The attention to detail was amazing and the system was solid. But since the passing of Steve Jobs, small little bugs have entered into the platform like system restarts when logging in or freezes when you aren’t really doing anything heavy with your device. These are small, but annoying little things that if the designers and developers had thought “Maybe Steve will be looking at this”, I doubt they would have allowed them to last. More often than not, we too allow “bugs” to pass our quality tests. Not because we don’t want to do the work but because we overlook them or think I can worry about that later, but I hate to tell you that most times later never comes.
I think we need to be more aware of the quality of our projects and the principles that we allow to guide them. We should never be satisfied with the status quo. We should always strive for each project to be better than our last. This means working through the hard bits like bugs we find in our code or situations of making our code as accessible as possible. Our clients are relying on our professionalism to produce products that would live up to the standards set by Rams or Jobs. If you know the code or design could stronger then make it that way. Don’t let laziness effect the overall experience. Don’t let these bugs hinder the ability to understand our clients content.
###The Remedy
Sometimes you don’t see the bugs up front or you think you’ve done all you can to provide a solid design. This is a great time to step away. If time allows walk away for a day or two, then come back and check your work again. You’d be surprised what misses your first glance. Refocusing your efforts and giving yourself time to breath, relax and clear your head will optimally allow you to see past the superficial perfection and dig back down in the core commandments of design. Once you’ve applied this kind of focus into your work, you’ll feel happier and prouder of the work you send out into the world. Remember that any great surfer is patient and focus while catching any type of wave. Then when the great wave comes along they are ready for it both mentally and physically and are able to have the ride of their lives. Be prepared when that one inspiring project finally comes knocking at your door. Deliver the product of your life.
