If a designer does not understand that ads/upsells/subscriptions etc are your meat and potatoes, you are dooming yourself to long days of big fights in which you’ll probably end up compromising more than you’d like out of sheer exhaustion.Make sure the designer you hire uses his/her power of understanding the user to make happy profitable customers. But some have gone so far in this direction they seem to have forgotten not all websites are nonprofits. If a designer doesn’t understand the end-user, he can’t make a functional design. In this age, pretty much every designer belongs to the cult of user-centered design. If you have to pick between gorgeous and effective, don’t let a pretty interface turn your head. But consider if you are hiring a designer to make you a website in this day and age, you are hiring them to help you make an effective website, not a website that wins a place in MOMA’s new digital collection. If it’s also beautiful your hit the jackpot. In other words, look to see if the design is doing the job you need it to do. See if the ads (if ads there be) are integrated into the design or tacked on after like a wart on a nose. See if the primary call to action pops off the page (If you dont’ know, the primary call to action– CTA– is the most important thing for the user to do if the company is ever going to make money, e.g. a “buy” button if the website is selling something, a sign-up button for e-commerce, etc).I like to squint a little at the page, making everything fuzzy, to see if that call to action is still flying at me in 3-D. Artifacts mean little if the end result is crap and it leads to interesting questions that may reveal if the designer has no grasp of technology and business needs.Some things to look for? See if the design is easy to figure out. They can have a fancy portfolio, or they can just pull up the website and point out what they did. Doesn’t matter. So get them to walk you through their work. You will have to live with what gets produced. But I say, if you are hiring, you are a fine judge. Now, you may say, how do I judge that? I’m not a designer. A good designer is able to both defend a design, but also adapt to ideas other than his own. But the heart of collaboration is having a point of view, expressing it, and having a dialog about it. That may be why the other site mentioned presentation skills. Consultants have to do even better still they have to sell the work the team is going to do and make the clients feel good about the work they’ve done. Lead designers have to do even better they have to sell the teams’ point of view upwards. That means participants have to communicate with each other. Software and web design is as collaborative as theater. Or a shrug and “I can change it.” He didn’t have a view, and if he did he couldn’t express it.If, in the interview, you feel like you are working too hard to get a conversation going, then imagine if every single day was like working with a sullen teenager.”What did you design today honey?””Nuthin’.” I worked with a designer who I called “themute” because when I asked him about any of his thinking, be it color choice or flow logic, he replied with a shrug. So how do I vet designers, if not by their paperwork? And honestly, I would hire someone if they did wireframes even though I hate the darn things. I don’t care if you use keynote, Powerpoint or Illustrator. I really don’t care if you never do personas, or if you make them up from a guy you talked to in the grocery story. Here’s why I wouldn’t hire someone based on wireframes, Powerpoint and persons: it’s not because these are necessarily bad (well, except the wireframes, which are so 2001 that they are the mullet of deliverables, and like the mullet I cannot wait until they are finally gone and I’m not asked to stare at them any longer.) I was bummed because these are merely artifacts and not necessarily the vital critical thinking skills you need to find in a decent designer. And it’s hard to clarify in 140 characters what teed me off about the original article. I tweeted that’s why I wouldn’t hire a designer, which caused some kerfuffle with my followers. I do remember it said things like “look at their presentation skills”, “see if their personas are based on research” and something about their wireframes. Oh, maybe it was How to Hire a User Experience Professional, or Interaction Designer or Information Architect, or whatever. A few days ago, I read an article with the same title as this post.
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