Where does design fit in?

Here’s the thing; Creating amazing products and apps for the Internet age isn’t about leading or supporting roles, it’s about teams.

Everything is awesome, everything is cool when your part of a team

The LEGO movie wasn’t wrong. The reality is ego and money trump everything.

To be a great anything you need to understand your own strengths and weaknesses. When you truly understand how you contribute to, or impact something, only then can you listen, and support, and lead. It’s impossible for a person of any discipline to put others first if they are entrenched in their own identity and what they bring to the “team”. That’s not a team, that’s a group of individual contributors.

This principle applies to Designers, Developers, Product Managers, Executives and everyone else that is part of the team.

As a career designer, and creative “leader” I know my work is garbage if I cannot find that happy compromise between what’s best for the customer, what makes business sense, and doesn’t cause developers to roll their eyes when it comes to implementing the work. Yes, in that order.

Here’s the thing; If your customer is unhappy, the business suffers. If your business suffers, the team suffers. It all starts with the customer. Happy customer, thriving business, employed team.

In the daily reality of most designers, there is a feeling of being undervalued, overlooked, and misunderstood. Sometimes it’s true, but more often it’s ego driven.

Engineering is the core, without it you don’t have a product to sell. Design is part of engineering. Neither design nor development should lead the other. Two gears in one machine, working together. Ego is a lead pipe stuck in the teeth.

A team that truly works together towards a shared goal will make a huge dent, an enormous impact.

Here’s the thing; Money follows.

When your team is working together, creating world shaking craters, setting aside their personal goals, and politics, putting the happiness of the customer first and always. Your business’ bottom line never suffers.

If your business is failing, there is one cause. Your offering sucks. Which means you aren’t putting your customers first, and/or your team, isn’t actually a team.

On a team, everyone leads, supports, and listens. Simultaneously and continuously.