Designer != User

 "Designers are not users." Jakob Nielsen.

  "A design isn’t finished until somebody is using it." Brenda Laurel.

 "The user’s time is more valuable than ours. Respect it. Good UI design is humble.” Jono DiCarlo.

When designing, there is a strong tendency to revert to a line of thinking like

• 'what would I like it to look like' or 
• 'how would I expect it to work'.  

But, of course, it's most often it's the case that you're not the user! As designers, unless we have actual users on-site, we're often forced to make many assumptions about how aspects of our design will meet user expectations.  Our unvalidated design assumptions can be wrong in two divergent ways. 

We can assume that a particular design will cause problems with users. As designers, we sometimes ask far too many questions and therefore over think a design.  I run into this problem often. I think things are more complicated than they actually are.  There was a study (sorry, I don't have the reference) that looked at the accuracy of designers' prediction of usability issues vs. what actually happens when the design is tested.  The result was astounding. Something like 75% of design points designers felt would be usability problems were not born out in testing with real users.

The opposite is also often true.  How often have you been totally surprised when user after user stumbles over a part of your design that you were certain was fool-proof?      

So what to do?

• create personae for the various potential user types
• Recognize and list the assumptions you're making in your design
• recruit test subject that match these personae 
• talk to a few of those users, try to understand  their mental model of the problem space, and keep their mental model (not yours) in mind when designing
• test, test, test -- ensure your assumptions are validated or refuted through user testing  
• Lose your ego.  Finding your design assumptions are incorrect is par for the course

Work well with other disciplines

 "Decision by democratic majority vote is a fine form of government, but it's a stinking way to create." Lillian Hellman. 

 "To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company...it requires a lot of disciplines." Steve Jobs.

If your title is "Interaction Designer", consider it lucky that you role is defined so specifically.  How steadfastly do  you stick to that role? How protective are you of other team member treading on your turf?

Thing is, the various roles on software design and development teams have overlapping skills to some degree. It's to everyone's benefit --and the product's benefit-- to recognize these overlaps rather than fighting over whose toes are being stepped on.

For example, visual (or graphic) designers and interaction designer often have UI pattern skills in common. Interaction designers and UI developers often share a good understanding of a widgets set's capabilities. Information developers often have the task-focus of an interaction designer and can easily recognize a poor design as they've had to save "poor" design through documenting work-arounds so often.

Ultimately though, when there's a design problem to be solved and there's no time to poll or test users on the issue, one person should have the authority to make the decision.  It's not always appropriate for the team lead to be the final arbiter as they may not have the skills to decide on all issues. Nor is it ideal for the strongest personality or most outspoken team member to be always making the call.

I've been on many teams with overlapping skills over the years. Some teams were able to easily come to consensus and other were always at odds. The best teams have always shared the following characteristics:

• the members did not protect their ego (see an earlier post: Lose your Ego)
• the team lead decisions are made by the appropriate discipline
• the person deciding shares the rationale for the decision

This way, all opinions are heard, conflict is minimized, all members can feel they've contributed and the best ideas are implemented.

Lose Your Ego

As a designer, your hard work will be easily and often challenged. I can be really disheartening when you've worked incredibly hard to create what you think is an elegant and engaging solution to a design problem and customers, stakeholders or user test subjects pick it apart. On the other side, when reviewing someone's design, it's so easy to see remaining design issues while not really appreciating or pointing out all that is right with the design.

If you have a big ego and therefore you easily become defensive, it'll get in the way of hearing any constructive criticism offered up. Some tips:

• you don't hold a monopoly on good ideas - welcome criticism and others' thoughts
  
• try to stay objective and evaluate (with rationale) others' ideas against your own
• don't become too attached to your design; it'll need to change
• don't design in a vacuum, seek feedback