Design Communication

If something isn’t working, point it out and go into as much detail as possible as to why. Tie it to the goals we agreed to earlier in the project. Understanding your reasoning is critical to solving the problem. Being told to do something a certain way, or worse, getting a comp of it done that way only means we have to reverse-engineer the whole t

Don’t assumeFind out the thinking or constraints behind choices.“To assume makes an ass out of you and me.”

The single biggest improvement is to flip that around and just show the final result.

I understand why designers present their process. They’ve done a lot of hard work, solved difficult design issues, tried out different approaches, failed, and thrown away ideas. It has been hard—it took ages to come up with something that they now know is good and

Central IdeaFeedback encompasses three forms: reaction, direction, and critique. Reaction and direction are limited in their ability to help us understand if the design choices we’ve made might work toward the product’s objectives. Critique, a form of analysis that uses critical thinking, is feedback that focuses on exactly that understanding.

Another common characteristic of bad critique is feedback that is justified by the giver from purely preferential thinking.

But, what about other aspects of the design? What about other questions that come up? For example:What new problems, complications, or successes might arise from the choices being proposed?What other objectives should the designer have been considering, but didn’t?Raising these kinds of questions can be important. Ignoring them might mean missing s

We hire professionals because we can hold them accountable. If you get audited, you better believe you’re taking your accountant with you to the hearing. If the credit card processing system on your site goes down, you want to know that your engineering team is on it. You also want to be able to call them into your office and ask what happened. Whe

Avoiding assumptions is simple: ask about them.Yup. Ask yet more questions. Put your assumption out there and ask if it’s accurate. If it is, continue on with your insights. If it isn’t, you might need to adjust your thinking a little.