Can’t get good ideas? Come up with some bad ones

Now I understand why it’s very important for designers.

I used to work in a small start-up where I was the only designer, took care of the whole product design. I could decide the direction of the design and all the details. Sometimes, I had to sync with other departments, but not truly sharing, informing is more accurate.

Now, when moving to a bigger company with hundreds of people, twenty different teams and a dozen designers, sharing earlier is much more important than ever.

I, a shy designer, bad at convincing people. And I’m scared of sharing my works with other designers. Because I might not have a strong point of view about things - or I’m not confident to speak up. The other designers usually have strong opinions about better design, especially seniors or persons who’d stay for a long time at the company. They seem very convincing. And I often change the design based on their feedback, even sometimes, I don’t think it’s better. It makes me frustrated. Seems like I can’t fully control the design and not own anything.

Because of that, I don’t share so often.

One day, I have a new product manager, he’s interim, managing two teams at the same time. So I have to work with another designer - the other one of this team. Even though I own the product but it affects to her team, so we have to work closely together.

We did a talk to kickstart the project, discussed what we can do, what are the problem and how to move forward. I felt very well at it. I got useful insights from her previous user testing, and great advice not to spend a lot of time on it yet, things can change when syncing with other teams. We deiced to envolve another designer from another team also because it also relates to that team. We did another sync together, and plan that the next meeting, all of us will come with some ideas and discuss it.

It goes on like that. Everyone contributes to their ideas. We agree on the direction and move forward. Honestly, mots of the time, there are no big changes when brainstorming with them. The new design is 70% similar to the original that I proposed. but when involving them in the early stage of the process, I don’t convince them again. No surprise, not a big concern. Maybe, asking for feedback is just a way to convince people. and the value at Caoursell makes sense

“Over communication is better than under communication”

It’s doesn’t mean that we have to alk more, it’s about sharing more, share often, get people envolve earlier in the process.

That’s where collaboration becomes seamless.

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