January 15, 2024
In high school and university, I started to dive even deeper into my self-discovery and to think about the job roles that best fit me. Many tests at the time suggested that I would be a great project manager. Other personality tests indicated that I have lots of diplomatic or mediator tendencies. And look at me now as a UX designer exercising them both. 🤓
As UX professionals, we like to tip-toe around chaos and order. So naturally whenever we start a project we like to start with gentle investigations and collecting of information as:
That being said we like to maintain meaningful and focused work. So very often in our process gather, and revise in multiple iterations. In this role of “project manager” or more accurately product designer, we get the rains probably based on our proactivity and need to be the glue of the project. By helping with the organisation and distribution of scope and goals, we aim to maintain a collaborative working style and ensure everyone is on the same page with us.
Gather and revise. After putting together all the business goals and creating the scope it is time to play some puzzle. Here, the skill of UX designers to pay attention to detail and back up to check the bigger picture plays a big role. Prioritisation, combined with planning, is the balancing act where designers' active listening (and note-taking) pays off. And when we talk about planning and prioritising we are talking about dynamic and fluid ones, based on key insights and findings through the process. Because if you find that something is not working and won't help your product, right there and then is the point to revise again.
If I had to choose which of these skills is most important, I would pick this one. Without transparent and honest communication, many internal and external roadblocks are present, and the project workload on its own is heavy enough. By facilitating and promoting collaboration through the team something lovely happens — we become stronger.
The best metaphor for strong collaboration that came to mind when writing was from The Legend of Khan Kubrat and the Bundle of Sticks (Bulgarian).
Unity makes strength. — Full legend you can read here. Right click on your Chrome browser to translate it to English.
Within owning your diversity as a team of professionals comes the interesting part: giving space to everyone to shine. Delegating tasks to more skilled team members and encouraging ownership of their input can provide quite a balance and harmony in a team. Imagine doing what you like and love best, shining in areas you are also skilled in and developing even more skills along the way. For example, during and ideation phase make room for collecting all ideas from different members. Many professionals have insights from passion projects and hobbies you wouldn't know about if don't know them better.
As UX designers we scout the internet DAILY. Having tons of newsletter subscriptions, watching plenty of tutorials, learning about the latest AI apps and prompts — share all that! Also, having the last 10–15 minutes of a meeting to exchange feedback and evaluate the progress and impact you have achieved can put your efforts and knowledge into perspective. We also learn the most from our failures. Make sure to make note of them and instruct how to avoid them in the future.
As a visual learner, I love explaining concepts with visual examples, sketches, and boards. graphs and more. So naturally I will introduce a specific feature or a tool to my colleagues to make their life and work easier. Sharing is carrying. Examples as such are:
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Thank you for reading until the end! 🤠
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P.S. If you want to be part of my curious journey, you can find me on also on Instagram @angelova.nikoleta.design and LinkedIn (Nikoleta Angelova). Don’t forget to include a note on LinkedIn. 😉
Are you struggling with productivity or understanding design decisions? Join me on my YouTube where I explain web design and stream sometimes. 🤓
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