Removing ego from design

One of the most difficult aspects of any web design project is reconciling the goals of the designer with the goals of the audience. (And by "designer," I am including everyone involved in the design process, including the client, the design agency, etc.) This is so difficult because the goals of the designer include so many facets -- the client wants to get more money coming in, the agency wants to please the client to get more work in the future, the creative director wants to wow other creative types with his/her vision and maybe win an award, etc. And amidst all of that as well are political power plays, internal arguments, and some "selective hearing" when it comes to research and statistics that don't support their individual goals. (I speak of no particular agency or experience here -- these are accumulated observations.)

The whole rigmarole can be a bit exhausting and it is very easy to get caught up in the "designer" side of things. It all seems quite serious - to step back and think about the fact that people can get into shouting matches over a single word on a website (I've seen it happen) - I don't know, it seems like the perspective is off. People take these battles very personally, and fight for things because they want them, or because it means something to them, and it's easy to forget that all that really matters is whether or not somebody going to your website is going to have a good experience.

This is why I've found it so valuable, in my own work, to start viewing the work I do as completely separate from who I am. Much of what I design is based on research - knowing what works and what doesn't - but there is not enough research in the world to make every decision foolproof. If something was a subjective call, or I designed based on a hunch, and someone takes issue, I'll explain my viewpoint but recognize that if I don't have an empirical study to back it up, it's really just an opinion.

In addition, when working in a group environment, letting go of ego can make the brainstorming and overall creative process a lot more open. An idea prefaced with "this may be stupid, but..." could end up being the best idea of the day, while one that someone thinks is surefire could be quickly tossed out as the details are thought out further. When ego is involved, the initial "stupid" idea might never be brought up for fear of a negative reaction, while the "surefire" idea might be fought for tooth-and-nail to the detriment of better options. Letting go of ego - where you perceive comments about your idea as a comments about you - switches the emphasis to the ideas, not the people.

This ends up being quite liberating in the long run, because not only does it make it easier to edit and adapt your design as more learnings come in, it also makes you focus more on what will best serve the end user. And in the end, that's really the truest measure of a successful design.

Beware the permanent brainstorm

There is a particular type of person out there who is very creative, who loves to come up with new ideas, who gets excited about a new concept they think could be really successful or beneficial. These people are vital -- without them, many (if not all) of the big ideas that have changed our lives would never have happened.

But there is one flaw that often comes hand-in-hand with this level of creativity and brainstorming. For every Steve Jobs (Apple), Bill Gates (Microsoft), and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), there is that friend you have who is convinced that adding zipper pockets to suspenders is the next big thing. Or maybe that was last week, and now they're pitching tiny umbrellas for cellphones. In any case, their mind seems to always be working, but never carrying through the thoughts to something that is not only a great idea, but one that they can (and do) actually implement. I call this the danger of the "permanent brainstorm."

Those examples are extreme, but I believe there can be a real danger to focusing so much on the brainstorming and "ideating" portion of a project that you never get off the ground and develop something real.

For a more grounded example, consider a project where a company wants to come up with a new marketing website. All they know at first is that they want to target a new audience that they don't currently speak to. The brainstorming phase begins, and the team narrows it down to one particular concept.

This could go two ways -- the team could further focus in, delineate their ideas, and develop them into a site and get it live.

Or they could just keep brainstorming. What if we broaden it to include this other audience as well? What if we focus more on the interactive games? What if we switch from an edgy/rough look to a clean/modern look? And then after trying all those alternatives, they keep spinning around to other ideas. A hot new competitor site shows up halfway through the project, and they want to take some of the competitor's ideas and re-think the original goal.

You get the picture. The ideas keep coming, the project keeps changing, people second-guess their original ideas and the whole thing continues to mutate and shift even as it's supposed to be nearing its completion. The budget has swelled, the timeline has been shot, and corners are being cut that could make the difference between something great and simple and something overly ambitious and complicated.

Of course, this is not to say that brainstorming is bad - as I mentioned before, it's the brainstormers who come up with all the big new ideas. The key is knowing when to shift away from generating more ideas and shift toward refining and implementing your original idea. It can be scary sometimes to do this, but it's all about putting a stake in the ground and saying "this phase is done, we need to move on to the next phase, or else we're going to get stuck."

That can be a hard thing to do. Nobody likes the idea of setting something in stone when they are anything less than 100% sure of it -- and rarely is any new idea a 100% bet. But this is where handy metaphors and sayings run short -- unless you are engraving tombstones, you're not literally setting things in stone. You can make changes later on if need be -- it's just important to respect that those changes should be based on fully reasoned thinking, not whims, or a dream you had last night, or what your 5 year old said when he saw a mock-up of the project.

Be excited. Think wildly. But recognize that as part of any project, brainstorming is just step one. It takes a lot of work to turn a good idea into a good product, and you'll never get to a successful end if you never leave step one.