Life as an interactive designer
Interactive designer Zoe shares what life has been like in the 8 months since she joined Webantic and the challenges of working in a small team.
At first, I didn’t plan on being a designer, I started as a software developer apprentice. Although I enjoyed my apprenticeship and learning different languages, I would always find myself being more interested in the design of what I was coding. Learning the basics of Java was fun, but I could never see myself just looking at code all day, it didn’t interest me enough. I started to show an interest in design and began to do odd jobs for the design team. From there on, I was invited to the design team and that’s where it all started.
Around 8 months ago, I found an agency that required an interactive designer and this is where I am now. Switching from companies was a big change, I felt a bit as though I was thrown in the deep end. I went from being a small part of a big team, to a big part of a small team. This has given me the opportunity to take more ownership of the design of projects that come in which has made me realise the importance of my job role. I have learnt that following a design process is key, when starting a new project, you may have a million ideas running round your head, some may seem to be perfect but they may not work if they are not validated or tested.
I begin by carrying out the research phase of my process, this involves researching the company, or similar companies to gain an idea of who the users are going to be. Designing around the users is vital, you may love the way your dashboard looks but it’s not just going to be you using it, you must think from a users point of view. Creating different user personas is very helpful in this phase. Finding out who your competitors are is also key, you can see what works and what doesn’t work in their designs and learn from this.
Once you have your users nailed down, you can design around them, I usually begin sketching all of my ideas and then scrapping the weakest. From here you have a base to work from. I find my sketch books are just filled with scribbles in bright sharpie colours. Then using the strongest sketches you can produce basic wireframes. This is where user testing comes in, targeting users that fit your ideal personas and asking them to carry out tasks using your wireframes can be very interesting. Some users may be completely oblivious to the ‘Home’ link in your navigation bar where others may just click the logo to return to the home screen. This gives you the perfect opportunity to make changes to improve the usability.
When beginning your high fidelity designs, you will benefit from finding inspiration from others. I like to find my inspiration on Behance and Dribbble as well as just looking through sites that I may have bookmarked if I liked the look of certain elements. Re-inventing the wheel is not the worst but sticking to conventions that you know work and have good success rates is more beneficial. You may also want to run a user testing session on your high fidelity designs, the more feedback you receive, being both positive and negative will allow you to adjust your designs for the best usability possible. Negative feedback is the best in my opinion, as long as there is a justified reason behind it, improving the design will not only better the usability but will allow you to not make the same mistake again.
Feedback from the client can completely change your designs, if the client doesn’t like it, they won’t want it. I usually have endless comments on Invision from clients, with things as small as changing the colour of a button. Although the changes are of the clients wishes you may disagree with them, this can be easily resolved by explaining your reasoning or providing them with another solid solution to the problem.
During my 8 months here, I have found that I have improved massively as a designer, I still have a long way to go to be where I want in the future though. Working on a variety of different projects allows me to learn something new each day and motivates me to further improve my knowledge and design skills.