Methodology

Who are we designing for? Designing for Buy-In (Part 1 of 3)

These groups either need to buy-in to fund your vision, or they need to buy-in to truly sell it and market.

This is part one of a series of three articles detailing the internal groups we have to design for in order to get great products built and sold. Part one focuses on the groups that must buy-in to your design.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever designed something that some other department absolutely ruined with feedback, ugh you just don’t understand design and aren’t thinking outside of the box!!!

How many of you have ever [had your design ruined] by Regina George? — “Mean Girls II, Art School Cruel”

Same here, sister. Same here.

I presented a design last week that I was super excited about. Here’s a list of things I was excited about, and how the client reacted:

• Perfect Typography: They didn’t care.
• Exquisite Color Harmony: They didn’t care.
• Seductive Drop Shadows: They didn’t care.
• Handsome Charts and Graphs: “Neat!” (translation: They didn’t care.)
• Pixar-Worthy Animations: “Oh cool, I read an article about Disney animation principles. Have you read that?” 🙄

You know what their only feedback was? The only thing they really cared about? I used incorrect terminology in a couple places.

That’s like going to visit the Mona Lisa and critiquing the wall plate.

Placard text: “The Mona Lisa” by Leonardo da Vinci is admittedly kind of a boring painting of some random white lady, but we thought the frame was kinda cool so we put it behind this bomb-proof glass. Medium: Drywall paint over stretched newspaper.

These things are a sobering reality. I’ve come to expect (and plan for) this kind of feedback. As much as I’d like to think I’m only designing for other designers (and Dribbble…let’s be real), my work will undoubtedly impact almost every department throughout the product development process.

Your pixels matter, so make them count. But before you start the journey toward production, you first have to design for the…