How I Apply Design Principles in A Fast-Working-Pace Digital Agency
For more than 2 years, I have worked full time in a digital agency as a system analyst especially for web application. The working experience was insightful yet challenging. I worked in a fast working pace while I had to pay attention to some design aspects. Along with the years of working, I learned user experience design through some courses. The courses enriched my understanding about the importance of design on my work. Here are my endeavors to align what I did in the agency with knowledge I got from the courses I have taken.
Let me tell you about my job description and what have been done by the agency to its various clients. The agency works for many companies that need digital services to enhance the effectiveness of their internal business as well as to promote their new line of business, products, or services. Every project is assigned to one particular team which consist of back end programmer, front end programmer, analyst, designer and one account executive. The analyst is involved from the very beginning since client give the project overview. Analyst helps to create the idea of how team would overcome the client’s problem related to his/her business, together with designer and account executive. After the idea discussion, analyst conduct research about client’s competitors that have similar products/services. Then the research become the foundation of the clearer idea which will be turned into some design deliverables. The deliverables visualize the idea into low fidelity prototype, such as information architecture (sitemap) and wireframes (low fidelity web design).
For these two years, I put my deepest interest in user experience design so that I took paid and free workshops, seminar, one day training held by private institution and government. There I learned quite comprehensive knowledge that made me realize that design is not just looking into how the application looks like, but also pay much attention into how it works and how it will fulfill the client’s needs and how effective it will overcome their problems. There is an underlying process that should be done to reach a robust application concept. The process begin with deep understanding to the user’s needs and concern by conducting some activities to gather user’s insights via interviews, survey and other methods. The results are then translated through a deep dive synthesizing into insights, user’s flow, and application ideas or features. The next process is to turn the ideas and feature into low fidelity prototype, which is tested to potential or particular user to get some constructive feedback for the sake of improvement. Design process is an iteration process of understanding, ideation, and implementation. Sometimes the feedback forces the designer to go back understanding the user and problems, then repair the idea and also the prototype. The iteration brings designer to the deeper comprehension and higher confidence to come up with the proposed solutions.
However, when I want to apply what I have learned to my work, I had some difficulties and barriers. The agency has many clients from various backgrounds. I think the working pace is quite fast because we have to deal with some clients with different line of business in one time. I did not want to deliver some complaints because that is just the working style of agency. But I just cannot find the best way to implement that. Moreover, the tight deadline given by clients make it more difficult to be idealistic. Sometimes the deliverables are driven by clients, so we cannot provide solutions which my team and I have considered the best. It is not rare when clients only want to apply their ideas which sometimes are very subjective. They also have their own time deadlines that are driven by the company’s program schedule.
Instead of giving up to such condition, I choose to try puting some design lessons into my work, even only a piece. What I had tried to do in such conditions were explained below.
- Realizing when design process is started
In digital agency, the time when design process is started is hard to be identified because in the first interaction with new clients we mostly discuss the solutions rather that talking deeply about their users’ problems, goals, and why they want to develop their business. The other reason why it cannot be identified is some clients is stick to their own solutions and timeline. What I used to do are conducting some analysis from the similar business line and short-interviewing the potential or experienced users. Then, in some meetings we convey about what we have found. I also realized that requirement gathering is the very beginning of design process. It is the time to guide them to talk more about their own problems, even though the clients keep stick with what they want.
2. Optimizing the process of creating design deliverables
Information architecture or sitemap is the main design deliverable which I have to fulfill in every project. Sometimes it is accompanied by wireframe and also user journey. The main one is derived from requirement analysis, competitor analysis and user target analysis. Before establishing the information architecture, I have to identified the main goals of the application and what are the messages need to be conveyed. Sometimes I have to create simple content mapping to make sure the content is consistent with the identified goals, or goals that I have predicted ( if the client does not know). After knowing the over all contents, I start to create the sitemap. There are some technical knowledge I need to know to make an understandable sitemap, so when new user see the menus they can easily know what the website is all about, for example copy writing. I have to know the words best describe the content. The words should represent the contents. The best way to find the words is knowing the message and the purpose of the content. Beside that, providing eloquent words that will attract users to click is a plus.
Designing wireframe is also a challenge because sometimes I have to imagine what the application will be look like, mainly what information or content to be provided. It is getting hard when the time is tight and I do not have idea at all because the website is used for internal use and there is no similar application, but the show must go on. Therefore, before creating the wireframes, I often create the user journey to identify the application flow and sketch the journey on a paper roughly. Sketch evaluation is a must when I have much spare time. I evaluate by contemplating, looking back at the goals, and comparing to the similar websites if any.
3. Conducting Evaluation of High Fidelity Design
After finishing the wireframe, the designer and I usually hold discussion to make her/him comprehend to the website concept and application flow and to evaluate is there any elements left behind or any missing screen. The high fidelity website design is created by designer by considering the design aesthetic. The next process, I evaluate the design of all pages: the application flow, the menu navigation, how user interact with the website, the way of how the main message is shown, attractiveness, the scalability of the design (how if there are many data shown, is the design still OK), how the design support SEO optimization, and identify the usefulness of the feature by asking for feedback from potential users.
4. Help to elaborate database design together with programmer
Designing database is strongly related to how the application would work. If the application is quite complicated, the assigned programmer and I would discuss the application flow to identify the best database design. Robust and scalable database become the key for application to run well. The possible database query, database join, and normalization determine the application speed and possibility to be modified when there are some change request and additional features in the future. Analyzing and predicting skill are useful in this step.
5. Front end evaluation
Once the all pages design is finished and approved by clients, front end designer is assigned to turn the design into codes. After being coded, the application flow can be comfortably tested and intuitively accepted or not. When it is completed, I have to check it on mobile site which screen is not acceptable based on common sense. The data scalability in the mobile version design is also highlighted, is there any bad interface or not.
6. Evaluate the user experience from website admin perspective
Beside evaluating from visitor’s view, I also imagine if I were the admin. Is the content management site would easy to be managed? Is the menu names understandable, using the business terms commonly used by the clients? Is the flow of how adding the content is easy to be done?
7. User acceptance test
This phase is quite crucial to prove that the design can be accepted, work well and address user’s problem. I used to ask potential users (are not member of the development team or friend of mine) to gather feedback. Some feedback are sometimes not aligned with what clients wants, so unfortunately they cannot be applied.
Working with numerous clients with wide range of business is challenging yet gives me so many ups and downs phase in how I practice the design principles. Not all the client I have faced (in Indonesia) has willingness to understand the users, identifies the goals and why, accept the proposed solutions, and focuses on what their users really need instead of what they want. The role of digital agency in Indonesia is not only to help them design and develop the technology, but also to educate the importance of design process which is user centered as the baseline of better application development.
