Background

When I was still a junior designer, I had a unique mindset about task requirements & how I saw the design. Every time I got a new task or backlog, I always used the helicopter view to see the problems, it sounds like something good, right? I also made some audits about the current journey to understand the problem better. And I often found many issues that need to be improved in terms of design. From the issue list, I started to make the design, even though it was out of the scope of the task.

And, that’s the problem.

Problem

As Junior designers, we want to do more and work the extra mile. But, we often forget that working as a Product Designer means that we’re not a solo player. We are working closely with other roles like Product Manager, Engineers, QA, Researchers, etc.

In every organization, normally we are working based on the roadmap that had already been planned. That means every task has a time variable, how long it should be done.

The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices.

Hick’s Law

So, the tasks, scopes, and cases that you need to provide will affect how long you need to solve them. It also impacts the team’s roadmap as well. And here is the problem, if you as a designer not focus on the scope that has already been decided at the beginning of the quarter. Keep trying to find other problems to solve, only to satisfy your perfection of a good design, you might ruin your team and organization objective.

More problems = More time is needed to solve them.

More time to design = The development will be delayed

The development is delayed = The product release will be delayed

Product release delayed = Failed to achieve the objective/Business target

Solution

There are several things we need to do as designers, aside from finding the design perfection.

Empathize with other roles

We know that we work in a team. Our actions will affect all the team members or even the organization. So, if we start to do something out of scope that might impact our fellow buddies, please consider that your work is not only about you. Do your best based on the scope that has already been decided before, because how long we finish your work will affect the others too.

Be more active during planning

Some of the designers often skipped this crucial session. At the beginning of the quarter, our beloved Product Manager and the stakeholders will plan all the initiatives, and roadmap that the team going to do. You need to join this session as well. So, you can understand all the initiatives, what objectives the team wants to achieve, and how long the time that you need to finish each initiative.

Sounds like a useless move, because sudden tasks often come from the stakeholders/PM. So, let’s check next move

Have evidence for negotiation

You already joined the roadmap planning, and made your design backlog and roadmap but, suddenly the PM asked you to do a sudden design task. What do you need to do?

First, show them your roadmap from the planning session that you guys had already agreed on. Then, show them if they want us to do a new task, they need to drop one of the tasks from the roadmap. So, you won’t get overwhelmed due to too many things to do. That’s why making a roadmap is crucial for designers.

Improve your design exploration skill

If you want to shorten your working time for each task. You need to improve your skills, if previously you needed 2 days to make a landing page design. Try to finish the same task in 1 day. You can do some tricks as well, like wireframe first, then go with UI. Or, if your organization already had a design system, it should cut the time a lot as well. What method suits you? You know it better than me.

Use organization objective as an anchor

Every initiative is normally related to a specific objective/OKR/metrics/KPI. You need to know where is that red string in your design task. So, you can make prioritization your design scope. If the improvement is directly related to the objective, you need to prioritize it first. If it’s not related, you can skip it for later.

You might also use this framework effort vs impact.

Find solutions that are low in effort, and high in impact. Easy to develop, and have a high impact on the organizational objective.

Thank you.