Design Loneliness
Originally published on a blog for a now-dead company in 2009. The article has been updated as of January 2019.
On a recent project a client confessed some small degree of envy of the pair design team structure. He was the sole designer at a medium sized software company doing good work, but unsatisfied doing it alone. In our short project he was able to see the value of paired design and wasn’t looking forward to heading back to business as usual. I’ve got four ideas on what someone can do in this circumstance, but first let me extol the virtues of Paired Design.
The Virtues of Paired Design
What is paired design? If you haven’t heard, some interaction designers work in pairs throughout the duration of a project. Generally, there’s one interaction designer responsible for generating ideas, or “gens”, and another interaction designer for synthesizing ideas, or “synths”. Though we occasionally swap roles over the course of a design meeting, when it comes down to crunch time we’re clear about responsibilities: Gens are responsible for communicative pictures, and Synths are responsible for explanatory narratives. Even when the team grows larger to include designers with material specialties, like visual or industrial designers, we tend to make sure that we respect the roles of Gen and Synth in design meetings.
I’m a huge believer in this structure, because we’ve all been lone designers in past careers, and I’ve seen the benefits of pair design for the 10 years I was with a consultancy that was committed to it:
Efficiency
- Having two on the team means that one has an eye on the strategy while the other has an eye on tactics. Ideas that might be cool but have unworkable consequences down the line can be acid-tested early.
- One can pick up the slack when the other is out of steam or ill.
- When it comes time for documentation, having paired designers means that you can work in parallel and get things done in half the time.
- Being in a room together working on design problems keeps you focused on the task at hand and free of email and just-a-little-more-research distractions.
Effectiveness
- Having two brains tackling a problem means you are doubling the number of unique experiences, perspectives, and ideas that can be brought to bear.
- Having to verbalize ideas to another often helps crystallize the problem, which is invaluable for generating ideas towards the solution.
- I have worked at consultancies that would occasionally shuffle design teams to increase sharing of best practices across the company and evolution of its methods.
Morale
- Last but not least, it’s better for morale to work with a partner than with a computer. It’s fun to build a productive design rapport with another person and solve hairy problems. Morale is the thing that makes designers eager to come into work and solve client problems, and paired design goes a long way toward that.
MORE: You can see more thinking about the virtues of pair design from my talk at Interactions14, and hear an even more refined version in this recording of a talk at SXSW 2014, co-presented with Synth extraordinaire Suzy Thompson. (If you’re a visual person like me you can also follow along with the Prezi.)
But what about the lone designer?
So paired design is the greatest thing since the three-hippo-corn moon, what then of those lone interaction designers dog paddling alone in a sea of developers? This is design loneliness. I have much sympathy for those in this circumstance, and four ideas that may help.
1. Be your own synth
This certainly isn’t the easiest of my suggestions, but it’s the cheapest. By this I mean that you recognize the value in taking both generative and synthetic approaches to your work, and be deliberate about engaging in both activities. Maybe reserve short stretches of time where you only engage in one or the other types of activities. You won’t get much of the morale or efficiency gains of a real live synth, but you might find yourself enjoying some increased effectiveness from spending deliberate time in strategic and tactical modes.
2. Make the case for a new hire
I can’t find any studies to bolster such an argument from an economics perspective, but if you can get a requisition for one new designer, make sure that designer can act as a good pair for your design. Get involved in defining the role and be an active participant in the hiring process. Try and find one with synth-like capabilities.
MORE: You can read more about each role in a free* e-book I co-authored with Gretchen Anderson, Pair Design—Better Together.)
3. Roll your own
If a new employee is out of the question, how about an old one? If there’s a designer in some other department of your company, strike up a conversation and schedule meetings that are specifically about helping each other with your projects, and keep an instant messaging client handy with those quick idea check-ins.
If there are no other designers around, find a developer who is willing to act in this role. Every one that I know has a strong interest in the designs that they build, and they’re generally really smart, so the trouble becomes finding one who can squelch develop-y concerns of edge cases and near-term implementability while you’re just working on the core designs.
4. Go Virtual
A colleague of mine is fond of noting that the number of people who can do great interaction design is probably in the hundreds, which given the habitable surface area, means that, depending on where you live, you might be quite a ways from the nearest potential team mate. But the good news is that it’s pretty much a guarantee that these people spend time on the internet, and many of them belong to industry groups like IxDA. You’ll have to scrub any designs you post for feedback without sharing intellectual property, but the folks on the message boards and mailing lists can usually see past the privacy bars and pixelations to help you with the interaction ideas and problems you’re having.
Good luck out there, and please let me know your experiences implementing any of this!
