Designers should argue. At first it may sound ridiculous to take the stance of encouraging conflict. However, fighting can encourage passion and creativity to surface. I don’t even want to mention how we sound when we’re going at it! Passion, arguments, criticism getting thrown around- it’s just a day in the life of a designer. It gets heated at work, and this may sound cruel to you but this is how things done within a design team. At Jotform, it’s not much different, we love to fight for every bit of color, font or space. Everyday is a battlefield…and we love it.
Creativity comes from our perception
Every designer remembers their first day at art school, the first project you do with your whole heart, the first time someone evaluated your design. Our ability to perceive the world around us, our unique ways of thinking and understanding- these are the ingredients that designers pull from. Finding new solutions to problems is our calling. Those designs are always right until someone does it better. It’s a never ending quest for perfection. At Jotform, we test our designs and layouts, while communicating with our beta users at the same time to get their thoughts about the product.
Because we must acknowledge our weaknesses, and always learn to get better, we must embrace criticism as beneficial to the art of design. This process allows designers to be cruel to each others work, but it’s out of appreciate and enthusiasm. Some days we spend hours to make just one move.
Beta users know the best
Every week we publish something to improve Jotform’s broader mission. After hours of fights, discussions, attacks and defenses – everything ends with evaluations of our user testings results.
We spend almost a day just to watch, analyze, and learn. We seek information on how our users use our product and features. They give us their valued suggestions and thoughts on their experiences, and we’re jotting down notes all the while. Then, we get ready for our next battle with other designers.
- -Did they find what they were looking for?
- -How long does it take them to finish their assigned steps?
- -Where did they look?
- -How they react when they find what they were looking for?
Every Friday after our meetings and watching our weekly usability tests, we learn a little bit more, we judge and evaluate, and we continue to ask ourselves questions.
“What we did was yesterday’s news.”
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