The perils of going alone and doing everything yourself. Last night my wife read the introduction to a book that addressed overfunctioning, which is: doing for others what they can and should do for themselves.
Design Control Freak
Design is collaborative
One of the challenges of being a remote worker is engaging with others in a meaningful way that fosters good communication and provides the necessary feedback and input to accomplish the tasks and projects in one’s queue.
Design is scannable
People don’t read they scan. A Nielsen study from the late 90s figured this out with some extensive user research. I know from my web browsing patterns for this to be a true statement.
I recently read an insightful article on the importance of scannability. Of the handful of points given these two caught my attention.
Design is iterative
I often think of the design process as a series of mistakes. Each step is moving toward the right decision and final product. The danger in this process is to make perfection the goal. Instead, the goal should be a viable outcome that has promise. In reading the book The Year Without Pants I was inspired by Automattic’s approach to releasing new products into the wild that were not fully polished. Their goal was to place a focus on innovation and creation. To see how the product performed. Once those metrics were in, they would then invest more time into fine-tuning and further iteration.
Design is for humans
One of the declarations from the Cluetrain Manifesto’s Ninety-Five Theses is: Conversations among humans beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice. Similarly, a website’s design is for humans and must look and feel human. Designed in a way that is natural and easy to understand.
I’ve drawn my circle. I’m going to grow.
There’s nothing I hate more than being told I’m wrong or I missed the mark on a project or task. If I’m honest, I have even gone out of my way to avoid such situations and try to fly under the radar of critique. I’m sure many have done the same and like me are repeat offenders.