Good UI has to serve people and the business
When designers say their best ideas were killed by deadlines, they’re often missing half the brief.
By Atulesh Kumar
Most UI designers argue that their creativity wasn’t accepted or made it into production because of time constraints.
Any design or creative work done for monetary benefit has two aspects:
- Human: how it’s going to benefit real users
- Business: whether it will meet financial or success goals
That’s where you need to start: exploring the expectations of both, the human needs and the business needs. A good-looking UI doesn’t necessarily guarantee success for either.
UIs can be biased, but when you test your visual in the real world, it gives you a deeper insight into its usability. A creative person should be open to recording those insights and flexible enough to change the design with a greater vision in mind. No creative idea needs to be thrown out if it meets the needs of both, in a practical and timely manner.
Deadlines are meant to keep your vision on track without too many detours. Imagine a designer at a company who gets unlimited time to create a visual. They start conceptualising many ideas. They work on one, discard it, create another, and spend hundreds of hours making a single visual.
Is that justified for anybody: the designer, the company, the business or the product? Your time costs money and effort. It also keeps you from other tasks. And as a designer, it would highlight an inability to come up with a solution quickly, which is what companies and clients are paying you for.
Be open to every situation, and think with a wider perspective.
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