No Designer is an Island or How I Stopped Complaining and Came to Embrace Collaboration

by Sarah B. Nelson

March 31, 2009

When I suggest collaborative design to some designers, I often hear, “Yuck! Collaboration is just design by committee!” They aren’t wrong. Poorly facilitated collaboration can kill a design project and demoralize a team. But the truth is, you can’t not collaborate. Whether you like it or not, you have to work with other people. You can work at them or with them. It’s your choice.

As designers, we exist in a complex ecosystem, balancing the needs of diverse constituents, striving to do the best work we can. When approached strategically, collaboration can help you communicate more effectively with stakeholders, gracefully negotiate political waters, and use collective experience to generate ideas or inspiration. Armed with rich, first-hand source material, you can confidently make informed, intelligent decisions.

I advocate for a very specific type of collaboration; I call it structured collaboration. It’s not rocket science but it can be a powerful addition to your toolbox. Unlike simply going into a room and working together informally, structured collaboration consists of thoughtfully designed work sessions, using visually-based techniques, physical materials (stickies, paper, pens) and planned activities to move the design process forward. Structured collaboration is loosely based on Participatory Design techniques, where users are directly engaged in the design process. Since these users are typically not designers, games, activities, and other visual tools help them express their ideas in ways designers can interpret. Structured collaboration does not replace other design tools; it simply helps designers better understand and balance the needs of a diverse set of constituents.

As designers (in the broadest sense), we focus a lot of energy on technical skills but often neglect or downplay the softer “people” skills. Daniel Goleman calls these skills “Emotional Intelligence.” They are as important to our success as IQ and technical proficiency. Qualities of emotional intelligence include, amongst others, social skills and empathy. Social skills, in Goleman’s definition, include “proficiency in managing relationships and building networks” and “an ability to find common ground and rapport.” If you possess social skills, you will be more effective in leading change and being persuasive. Empathy includes “the ability to understand the emotional makeup of other people” and “skills in treating people according to their emotional reactions.” We talk about empathy with our users but we also need to cultivate empathy for our stakeholders, too.

Think this sounds fluffy? Yeah - I used think the same way. I’ll make it more concrete. Imagine this typical design process for a home page: you do some stakeholder interviews, you write up a brief, your team goes away, works hard, and spends weeks developing some brilliant concepts. You give your big presentation to your key stakeholders and BAM! You’ve totally missed the mark, or at least your stakeholders think so. Everyone is disappointed and frustrated.

How did that happen? You’ve failed to communicate, to find common ground and build trust. Assuming your design skills are rock solid and your stakeholders aren’t evil (and they almost never are), you’ve missed some critical information. This brings us back to social skills and empathy, right? For instance. consider the possibility that your stakeholder hadn’t completely thought through the problem until you showed him something. After all, he’s not the designer. You are. Or, what if he is worried about his own department’s performance? Perhaps, since he lacks a design vocabulary, he is asserting his needs the only way he knows how. His reaction might be more emotionally charged than normal. He’s had few other outlets up until this point, so he’s using the presentation to let you know his concerns. There could be a hundred other reasons that you are unaware of.

When you take a structured approach to collaboration, you can nip some of these communication problems in the bud. You allow people a chance to weigh in. You establish communication lines and begin to better understand how people work, what results they need, and how to best play to their strengths. By holding carefully planned work sessions, you can use visual techniques and activities to answer questions, foster discussion, and bring your whole team — stakeholders and all — together around a specific problem.

How would this work? In the design problem I mentioned above, you might first hold a two-hour visioning work session with your stakeholders. Together, you’ll imagine the possibilities for the home page. You might ask them to draw their ideal home page or assemble it from pre-made parts. You might ask them to share examples from other sites that work for them. You might bring in your own examples. The examples or drawings are not the interesting part. What they say about them is. Listen closely for concerns, preferences, and preconceptions. You don’t necessarily have to accommodate them, just be aware of them. This is your raw material.

Half-way through the project, spend an hour with the same stakeholders to look at, discuss, and evolve some early concepts. Hang your concepts on the wall. Ask for specific kinds of feedback and post questions you’d like answered on the wall next to the concepts. Point out concerns you have. Recall the concerns you heard expressed in the vision session and show how you’ve addressed them. Give people sticky notes and ask them to write down their concerns or questions directly on your concepts. Again, you don’t have to accommodate all the feedback, just take it into consideration. Your goal is to hear their concerns and needs early while you can still address them. They can also hear your concerns early and take them into consideration.

The real benefit of these two simple sessions is trust. You are building a common ground and sense of rapport. Finally, when you share your work, your stakeholders won’t be surprised and they are less likely to nitpick it; they’ll have seen ideas evolve from the beginning and better understand how to engage with you. They also know that you’ve heard their concerns and have addressed them. Your critique will be more productive and informed critique.

One word of caution: you are still the designer and still need to do the design work. Don’t get run over. Work sessions are made or broken on effective facilitation. This means that, as the session’s facilitator, you need to set the stage for the session, elucidate expectations, and handle conflict gracefully when it arises. If you don’t think you can facilitate a session alone, get help from a manager, project sponsor, or another designer. Whatever you do, don’t abdicate authority to the loudest mouth in the room. Be polite, but assertive. If the session goes south, table it. Take a break. Re-group. Be clear about what you need and what you can offer. Ask stakeholders what they need from you and be clear about what you can and can’t do. If you are critiquing design work, just critique it. Don’t solve it on the spot. If you are generating ideas, generate ideas. Don’t commit to one.

Build collaboration and work sessions into your practice. It might be daunting at first but try it. Start small and simple, gradually including your stakeholders. Be patient through the transition; there are bound to be fears and missteps. Keep trying to foster strong communication and clear expectations through work sessions. Over time, you’ll get better at it and people will trust the process more. You’ll be able to make decisions more confidently. The social relationships and empathy you develop will not only make your job more satisfying but will help you design more efficiently, and increase the quality of your work.

Sarah B. Nelson is a design strategist for Adaptive Path. She has ten years of experience in interactive media and designing kiosks, mobile, and online experiences for clients in a variety of industries. Sarah has a particular passion for practice development, conducting research into methods for improving collaboration, supporting creativity, and encouraging innovation.