Comments on Talent Isn’t Everything

johnny wolfe — Fri, 11 May 2007 20:54:16 GMT

Great article. (I just signed up to this account—How do I bookmark this to my profile so I can refer back to this later?)

Michael Beavers — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 13:29:52 GMT

Chanpory, this is a nice article. When you mentioned coming up with a lot of ideas and contrasted with also not doing sloppy work, you touch on an issue that will be increasingly central to design companies and agencies. There should be a clearer role definition between visual design and interaction design. In many agencies, these separate roles are still practiced by a single creative team.

Visual design is about “concept”, which includes interpretations of mood and feel, while interaction design is much more focused on details of creating testable prototypes—based on how user research is guiding the working product. Loose ends and too many “concepts” from visual design can actually serve to distract users during testing—not to mention the likelihood of blowing through a research budget. Both money and user respondents are difficult to come by.

The creative and interpretive pressures on these two types of professionals are quite different from one another, but both are critical to developing a good experience. For junior visual designers, you’ve done a nice job of outlining some success (or failure) factors. I’d love to hear more about your experiences with successful junior IDs, too.

wayman Luy — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 22:00:32 GMT

As a Junior Designer this article definitely drew me in. I can’t say where I sit on the talent/habits poll but I have learned a lot in this first year. Talent is important but not as much as it’s forgotten sibling skill. Talent sounds like it just got pulled out of a hat. I started from a programming background and learned how to design, draw, and communicate visually. It’s not a natural talent for me. I’m still learning, everyone not just designers continue to learn and grow their skills. From my perspective the most important things is to soak up the knowledge around you. UI designers, visual designers, and developers all have something to impart. You could say I’m one of those ‘idea people’ but realizing “hey I’m just a junior designer” definitely leads to a lighter weight on your shoulders. It also lets you open up to the free exchange of ideas that is hopefully happening in your office/studio.

Rahel Anne Bailie — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 16:12:13 GMT

Talent isn’t *all* you need, but talent *is* definitely part of what you need to be great at design. Just as some will never be great dancers or musicians, some will never be great designers. It’s the talent that gets you to a certain point, and the work ethic that takes you the rest of the way. I’ve supervised my share of designers, and have seen the various mixes of high-talent/low-habits, low-talent/low-habits, and low-talent/high-habits, and high-talent/high-habits. The first two might are the same nightmare in the workplace – missed deadlines, sloppy deliverables, and eventually departmental dissent as coworker resentment rises. Of course, we all want to work with high-talent/high-habit designers, but I’ll take an average-talent/high-habit designer any day, particularly in a junior position where they have the opportunity to bust out and gain confidence.

David Glaze — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 19:06:52 GMT

As someone who’s been managing designers for about 20 years, I can say “I half agree”. While it’s true that success for a young designer typically does include on the kinds of skills described in this article, it would be a mistake to undervalue talent in the mix. A junior designer who is organized, productive, detail-oriented, positive and communicative but not a particularly talented designer is often destined to find his or her career path shifting towards Production, running a studio, or becoming a Creative Services manager. All noble callings to be sure, and invaluable to the success of any design firm, but not necessarily the designer’s original goal.

I find points 1 (Work quickly. Produce a lot.) and 3 (Be versatile.) to be particularly problematic in this regard. These are great traits, to be sure, but pointless if the output is not good. Quickly produced reams of mediocre, off-target or un-executable work is far less valuable than a few well-conceived concepts. Ditto for versatility…being able to do mediocre work in different styles is a questionable skill at best.

Christina Wodtke — Tue, 01 May 2007 01:11:11 GMT

When I managed a team of designers, I used to say, you HAVE to give me an estimate. And You HAVE to learn how to geg good as estimating the time it takes to do you work. And I want you to tell me 12-24 hours in advance when its’ gonna be late (even 2 hours is better than not at all). BUT you won’t get in trouble. But if the due date ever comes, and your work isn’t there and you didn’t warn me ahead of time. your ass is mine. All is forgiven, unless I get bad surprises.

As a manager my job was to protect and grow my designers as professionals. But that means knowing what’s up. If a project does get out of scope, better i knew that ahead of time—even if the designer might still make deadline—than find out from an angry client. More over, when a designer tells me these things, I can help them deal with it—advise how to handle growing scope, advise how to deal with floating deadlines. Something I can’t do if I don’t know what’s going on.

Christina Wodtke — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 15:17:15 GMT

Regnard Kreisler Raquedan — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 04:32:14 GMT

“Alert managers when work falls out of the project scope.”

Easier said than done. But it’s really better to be upfront about project delays. Perhaps there are good recommendations on how to be the bearer of bad news?

Alexander Levashov — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 07:39:39 GMT

Regarding p. 3. Be versatile
I think that following this recommendation designer risk to became low level specialist in everything instead of top professional in design.
I know very few people who know both for example Action Script programming and design and I don’t know anybody who good both in programming and design.
IMHO, that’s enough to limit your versatility in ‘Basic programming concepts’, on HTML, CSS, Flash if you work for web.

Teresa Torres — Tue, 08 May 2007 18:08:14 GMT

It’s not enough to anticipate problems. You also have to explore solutions to those problems. Nobody likes the person who always points out what’s wrong with an idea or what could go wrong with a plan. But if you point out the problem and suggest some possible solutions, then you are being productive as opposed to just critical.

Otherwise, a good article. :-)

Kathy Marks — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 17:05:53 GMT

Nice article. Good advice for experienced, as well as beginning, designers.

Manish Pillewar — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 04:19:06 GMT

Communication:
This has to be polished to a professional extent. Newbies need to practice clear communication in order to articulate their ideas to the clients at times. Clear and professional communication also helps in defining the exact goal of the UI exercise and helps to eliminate ambiguity. Junior designers need to practice writing professional emails and polish their talk as well.
Subset : Vocabulary:
Again from a professional perspective, designers need to learn the talk. Know and practice using UI jargons, read a lot for the same. Designers need to be armed with examples for every UI design they suggest as well. Clients, often from the business side, need to be given examples they know & UI’s they have seen, to understand things better.
My two cents.

Mac Randall — Tue, 08 May 2007 18:08:26 GMT

So often I encounter junior designers that want to be “idea people.” While I greatly respect the power of ideas, someone has to execute them. As an interactive producer I greatly value talent, but also greatly value the ability to execute ideas. A humble attitude mixed the tips mentioned in this article could serve any new designer very well in starting on the path to becoming a creative professional.

johannes von sichartshoff — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 16:07:49 GMT

“Avoid gossip and talking ill of fellow coworkers, clients, and competing studios.” – bah Humbug. Great Gossip is a fabulous ice breaker and shows you care for the industry and are aware of the market. As long as it is juicy and funny. I don’t know, it seems like you forgot to add “Be an android.” – if this list is really what it takes, I don’t want to be a successful designer anymore. And surely not at Meta.