Design Is a Job

The web is made of content. Design is what holds all that content in place.

A good marketer works for your audience. A bad marketer works for your advertisers. A good marketer will work with you to put together the best possible experience for your customers.

Information designers flesh out the structure and underlying principles of the site, i.e., the blueprints (thus the architect thing). This is generally borne out in wireframes, also known as page schematics.

Research doesn’t tell you how to design, it tells you where to design. And a good researcher isn’t prescriptive, they just gather and analyze the data.

Their job isn’t to tell you what to design; after all, no researcher could have told Henry Ford that people wanted cars. But a good researcher could have told him that people enjoyed going faster.

The best way to work with a project manager is to be clear about what each of you are responsible for and to keep them informed of project process as much as possible.

The project manager also serves as the voice of the client in the room. They make sure the client’s requirements are being met, and do most of the day-to-day checking in with the client.

If you have the luxury of working in a room full of designers of all specialties, you need to make full use of them. Work together. Early and often.

Working with other people is simple: figure out what they want, and make sure they understand what you want.

If a client’s not happy with the firm they hired, let them clean it up. You stay clear of that mess.