Lessons From The Untitled Design Conference
As a creative, it’s always nice to mingle with others in your field and interact. Growth is imminent when networking with others of like mind and a tech conference for designers is a sure-fire way to create a large network for yourself.
Tackling the issue of networking and also creating an avenue for designers was the main goal of the organisers of the conference I attended.
On Saturday, the seventh day in this beautiful month of May 2022. a tech conference for designers was held in Lagos, Nigeria. It was the first of its kind and was pretty interesting.
The conference boasted of elite speakers in the design world who shared their experience with other junior and newbie designers.
Before you get bored with this article, let me point out that this isn’t a review of the event. It’s a summary of the teachings from the speakers which I believe will be of help to other designers.
Without further ado, let’s begin.
Oh, I also need to add that we had several breakout sessions and these lessons are gotten from the breakouts I chose.
Now that you know what you’ll be getting. Let’s begin already.
Caveat: Some of the content here are words from the speakers, and all I’m doing is paraphrasing and sharing, not stealing. Just wanted to put it out there.
What to expect
- Are you stealing like an artist or are you just a thief?
- How to differentiate high value and low-value designer
- Should learning design principles be at the forefront of a designer’s journey?
- Is design ever done?
- Storytelling in design
- Design growth principles
1. Are You Stealing Like An Artist or Are You Just A Thief?
The issue of theft and copyright infringement in the design world is becoming so rampant that at any point in time, you just have to take a number in the queue and wait your turn. Drawing inspiration from people is different from moving components around in your design. As a designer, the one way to mitigate theft is to expose your mind to more designs. Feed your eyes to view designs. Don’t sleep on platforms like Pinterest, Behance, and Dribble. If you find yourself unable to post a side by side image of your inspiration and your design then maybe, just maybe, you drew more than inspiration from the designs.
Lesson:
As a designer, feed your mind designs and explore your creativity. Learn. Avoid lifting other designers’ ideas verbatim and claiming them as yours.
2. How To Differentiate High Value from Low-Value Designers
Are all designers the same? Turns out the answer is no. While some designers attach high value to their services, some, albeit unintentionally, make themselves low-value.
How?
By the questions, they ask. Shocked, right? The questions a designer asks tell what type of designer they are.
So, what questions exactly?
How did you come up with this idea?
Describe what this looks like?
How will you judge if this is successful?
Why is this important to you?
Beyond money, why does your company exists?
Why do you believe this to be true?
Aside from asking the right questions, the price you charge is also a value determinant. To be a good designer, you must understand SALES. Take it easy. I don’t mean the marketing sales type.
SALES is an acronym for Serve, Ask thoughtful questions, Listen, Empathise and Summarise.
Lesson:
As valuable questions to your clients. Try to get to the core of the product's existence and tap into the unspoken. Questions dig deeper into the core of the problem.
3. Should Learning Design Principles Be At The ForeFront of A Designer’s Journey
This is a question that gets many into a twist. While some are of the opinion that you should start designs and then learn the principles, others are of the opinion that learning the design principle should come first before any serious design process.
So, which is it?
As a designer, learning a design principle allows you to be competent in the field. It helps align your design flow. No matter how experienced you are as a designer, you need to always have a refresher on the design principles.
Every time you do this you get fresh insights; you pick up on what you might have missed and your overall design flow gets better.
Lesson:
No matter how far you’ve grown, always go back to the basics. Design principles are there to help and not hinder your growth.
4. Is Design Ever Done?
I sincerely want to drop a laughing emoji with this question because I don’t think this has an agreeable answer. Designers will take sides with this question, but I’ll try.
A design is said to be done when it is completely functional and meets both business and users’ needs.
Why do you spend long hours pushing pixels and staring into the laptop with recommended glasses if not to help users? But the word “done” means many things to many people. Every day you go to either the Google Playstore or Apple play store, you find one app or the other needing an update.
Design continues even when it’s live. You’ll always need to work on it to ensure you meet business and users’ needs.
Lesson:
Design is only done when it fulfills business and users’ needs. Until this is achieved, it’s an open work in progress.
5. Storytelling in Design
Don’t you just love a good story? I know I do. And the best part is that design requires a very good story. A story allows users to immerse themselves in your product.
But how do you tell a worthy story? What are those traits that make a story worthwhile?
There are three main characteristics of a good story?
A good story is relevant:
It must have context. Context is categorised into three segments: narrator, medium and recipient. When a story is told in any of the three contexts, it differs. A story from a narrator’s point of view will differ from that of the narrator’s or recipients’. And once a story lacks context it’s not worth listening to.
A good story is consistent:
Consistency in design is achieved through documentation, style guide, design system, etc.
A good story is ubiquitous
There should always be a central idea behind every story you tell. Once a story has all three traits, it becomes timeless.
Timeless isn’t relevance through time. It is relevance in spite of time.
6. Design Growth Principles
What is growth as a designer? How do you measure your growth? growth means different things to different people. It’s a case of one man’s meat being another’s poison.
Let’s compare growth expectations to growth realities.
Expectations: social validation, salary bump, flexible time and beautiful UI/UX.
Reality: compounded design thinking, data-driven approaches, conflict with PMs, people/team management, complex design processes. From the above, you can see that what we think growth is and what it actually is are very different things.
Sure you want to look good and have a bio that says designer @so so, but that’s not what it is. It encompasses a lot of hard work and grit.
For me, growth is when I can accomplish what I couldn’t the day before. I celebrate them and I’m always proud of myself no matter what anyone says.
Growth is a state of mind. It’s not measured against any laid down standards aside from the standards you place for yourself.
Celebrate your wins. Be curious. Appreciate your journey.
Growth comes from endless exploration. You take risks, experiment and keep trying.
Set goals and targets. Communicate more. Ask more questions. Find complex problems to experiment with and collaborate on. Find people who motivate you.
One major growth strategy hack is to invest time into creating defined career development paths job specs yourself, based on your interests, challenges and behaviours.
Finally, remember that growth is practice plus consistency.
I know this has taken up a lot of your time.
Apologies.
I’ve tried to limit this to the most vital information, but as you might have guessed, the entire event was packed with so much value and content that it’s almost impossible to stop writing.
Anyhoo, I’m done.
Enjoy
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