I once worked with a marketing strategist who would amble down to the Creative floor, issuing opinions about the words and pictures being used to make a banner/tile/blog, etc. for a campaign. Invariably, he would state things like “kill it”, “no”, “can we do something more creative” or “I don’t like it. It sucks”, or a variant of these. Each in their own way insulting to the person making the thing, both personally and professionally, with zero positive return. He wasn’t wrong many of these times. There was work that did need improvement or showed a lack of polish it should have had or outright phoned-it-in sucked.
But being right is only part of the fix, though. He only had alarms, no answers. Leadership has to do better than find fault.
You cannot be a leader and be devoid of assertive answers to the problems found.
Whether you are being led or leading others, finding problems is an easy thing to do. Sometimes we find them just to say we did and check the “art directed” box for that round of review.
In the case of my marketing friend above, his personal opinion, though founded in academics and analytics, came out with no wrapper of “why”.
And worse, yet, no clear set of instructions or inspiration to improve the work.
The result of critique without reason is resentment amongst teams.
If you tell me to move my foot because you “don’t like it there”, my natural tendency would be to keep it there as a point of pride, to defend my foot being there for any number of true/not true maxims. Maybe stand a little harder.
If you ask me “would you move your foot so you are not standing on my toe” we are out of the realm of opinion and back into the realm of UX. It is a better experience for you if I am not standing on your toe and I can feel good about solving a problem.
It very well may not have hurt your toe at all, you might simply want to better see your lovely shoes or prefer I am not that close.
The same result is achieved but I was convinced for experiential reasons, for things founded in fact. Do this with your design.
When we make decisions about visual design built on experience frameworks, it is our responsibility as designers to align our opinions and ideas around the results to be achieved. A good designer learns to frame their biased opinions inside of the research and findings to get things (their)both ways.
Fix things.
Show others how to fix things.
Show others how to think about fixing things.
Present arguments with fact, tact and alternatives.
If someone tells you to change something without validation, ask for it. It’s what we are supposed to be doing here. Remember that the things we do and the things we make have a common goal: Being useful.
