Blog ›

(See my earlier posts for introduction to the series.)

Milestones are one of your best friends. They force you and the whole team to make decisions, pull all the bits and pieces together into one coherent set. Typically there is a presentation to management and other reviewers at milestones. The desire for positive feedback and credit (or fear of public humiliation) typically gets the best out of designers. Necessity is the mother of invention. During presentations, especially with alert reviewers, you cannot hide deviations from original plans or design drivers, gaps in the design, slipping schedules, etc. It can be painful, but it’s good pain.

In addition to major milestones, internal design reviews and approvals are very important part of the design process. When you have one part of a design thoroughly reviewed and approved, you know that you have a solution that works. The worst thing in interaction design is that you don’t have any solution that works. It is a very unnerving feeling. You don’t really know if there is a good solution for the design challenge within the given requirements. But when you find one that works, even if it is not the most elegant solution of all, you can breathe. You have a fallback, whatever happens. This will free up your mental energy and creative juices again. You can reinvent the component and try something much more radical and potentially much better.

My recommendation is this: find these fallback solutions early. You will feel more confident while exploring something new. Communicate always only the approved solution outside the design team. Don’t start speculating about your more exploratory work or drafty ideas. This may cause confusion among the stakeholders: do these guys know what they are doing if they are changing the designs all the time? Show the new designs only when they are ready and internally approved. When you communicate the changes firmly and with confidence, people will happy to trust you for the next steps too.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sunshinecity (c) Creative Commons