Thanks to all 170+ of you who voted last week on our cover design. The clear winner, coming in at over 70%, was this one, which makes me laugh every time.
I think one reason why we rarely celebrate collaboration or facilitation is because we designers think compromise is bad, compromise with product managers and developers is worse, and compromise with clients is the end of the world.
Also: other than a case study in someone’s portfolio or a conference talk, you’ll never know about the hard work that goes into maintaining stakeholder relationships, building alignment, driving projects to ship sooner if smaller.
Every designer should read John Kotter’s The Heart of Change, which is about driving organizational transformation and is also a playbook for doing all of the hard work necessary to make it possible to ship something better.
The word compromise is fascinating and I'm glad you mentioned it. There is a kind of strange idealism at the core of all of this.
If we can use the word collaboration instead of compromise, the same situation means being open to better ideas that come from others. Put another way: what good is an uncompromised idea that never ships? If a compromise makes it feasible, isn't that always a good thing? Some designers seem to think that it isn't.
Thank you for illuminating this design purity trap! I've always considered a design to be serving and problem-solving for another human being or purpose. The fun thing about design is that it requires exploration, communication and discernment, which is a messy process indeed! Integrating that mess requires a kind of artistry in itself, and then good design is born out of that - not out of ego, trend or reputation.
Thanks for using the word mess - maybe that's part of the problem? The purists don't believe there should be any mess, even though some kinds of it might be an unavoidable part of the process?
I think one reason why we rarely celebrate collaboration or facilitation is because we designers think compromise is bad, compromise with product managers and developers is worse, and compromise with clients is the end of the world.
Also: other than a case study in someone’s portfolio or a conference talk, you’ll never know about the hard work that goes into maintaining stakeholder relationships, building alignment, driving projects to ship sooner if smaller.
Every designer should read John Kotter’s The Heart of Change, which is about driving organizational transformation and is also a playbook for doing all of the hard work necessary to make it possible to ship something better.
The word compromise is fascinating and I'm glad you mentioned it. There is a kind of strange idealism at the core of all of this.
If we can use the word collaboration instead of compromise, the same situation means being open to better ideas that come from others. Put another way: what good is an uncompromised idea that never ships? If a compromise makes it feasible, isn't that always a good thing? Some designers seem to think that it isn't.
Thank you for illuminating this design purity trap! I've always considered a design to be serving and problem-solving for another human being or purpose. The fun thing about design is that it requires exploration, communication and discernment, which is a messy process indeed! Integrating that mess requires a kind of artistry in itself, and then good design is born out of that - not out of ego, trend or reputation.
Thanks for using the word mess - maybe that's part of the problem? The purists don't believe there should be any mess, even though some kinds of it might be an unavoidable part of the process?