Erika Hall’s Post

What should we expect when designers haven't been trained on strategy? They're generally hired for outputs not vision. So they deliver shiny assets because that's how they're evaluated. The designer, researcher, and product owner could all impact vision but instead each is told to not delay the roadmap. The rise of service design as a holistic practice could have shifted this problem by having someone responsible for connecting and facilitating the needs and special considerations of various teams. But it just never caught on in North America like it did in Europe because it's difficult to associate a KPI to the person's role who it is to catch what slipped through the cracks. That's part of why we started the Design of AI podcast to help product teams see beyond the hype and learn how to better collaborate. New tech is a great opportunity to leave old assumptions behind and focus on fundamentals.

We’ve been looking at bringing back balsamiq for exactly this reason. There was hope that we could find a reasonable “sketchy” figma library, but we’ve never found one that competes with balsamiq.

Actually, this is exactly what is about to be totally destroyed in the design process by AI. We have seen it already - when Canva started, it had a key discovery that users were stalled by the blank canvas. So their innovation was to steer users towards selecting premade concepts and pre-filled templates. Now, people make content without even bothering with the conceptual design stages. Instead, there is a full-fledged design to duplicate. The entire first part of the design process is completely circumvented. Now, people are using ChatGPT, etc. for first drafts of writing. And this is only going to expand as AI's capabilities expand. There is no blank screen that confronts us, and forces us to think deeply. No asking what we're designing; why we're designing it; how we're designing it. Instead, everything is generated, with all the flourish and detail, but no actual thinking inputted. (This isn't to condemn AI - this is just an observation)

Very important point. Been a repeat experience. We owe it to the stakeholders to focus on the most important decisions first, and later down to detailing. If the details are there, people WILL focus on it. Avoid distractions early on. Use rough wireframes, paper prototyping, whatever works. We could do well if we focus on visual design at the end, regardless of if its an AI generated polished set of wireframes.

You’re not wrong. I love to mock & prototype on paper first. I do think that as design systems have matured, it’s really efficient to slap those components down to mock something up quick — and fidelity is already there. Is it faster than sketching? 🤔

This is how the ideal workflow for the designer would look like. But 2 reasons why it's difficult to put into practice. And both go hand in hand 1. Time: The perceived time and effort seems to be higher when creating both lofi and hifi. Which is difficult to justify in fast paced environment 2. Visualization: Unlike Designers, the stakeholders don't have a good visualization prowess. So the rough-lofi distracts them from discussing the actual solution

I have experienced this first hand. I got excited by what Figma could do, and how quickly I could mock up a good high-fidelity prototype. I presented it to our team, and our head designer pulled me aside after to explain that by skipping the low-fidelity sketches, I had actually done a disservice. She explained that the stakeholders would now be subconsciously tied to what looked like the final product, which would make it harder to present the actual final product later on. She was 100% correct with that and I have learned to present ideas in a very low-fidelity sketch to leave lots of room for development down the line.

Yes, a timeless and longstanding principle for working through design. The psychological impact of polish in design during the process has unintended consequences.

I understand the perspective, but I can't agree. Creating rapid prototypes that are visually appealing is not a bad thing. In a dynamic environment, being "done" often means implementing the design on the front end. Figma is great for expediting strategic design and bypassing extensive polishing, allowing for better communication and quick feedback from stakeholders. Tools like Figma enable the creation of strategic designs while saving resources for valuable products that may not have large teams. I see it as a way to foster collaboration between design and UI engineering, especially when low-definition wireframes fall short of conveying the intended ideas.

Totally agree, I've always implored designers on my team to start with sharpies. However, while I get the resistance to "fidelity", I've always hated "polish" even more, because it implies a linear process of just buffing something up (as opposed to evolving it conceptually) and it's something that always feels optional (ie will be cut when the inevitable crunch comes). It's often a challenge to communicate that you're using visuals to explore possibilities, not a first cut of an interface - figma definitely exacerbates this.