After consulting for nearly 9 years, I’ve come to the conclusion that being a designer doesn’t automatically entitle you to the collective benefits of any industry. You have to sell yourself and talents every time you walk into a room. Is that good? If you have the skills to drive ideas, it allows you to set the rules and process; if being the person who pushes ideas forward just isn’t your thing, you might find yourself becoming the disgruntled designer.
I have experienced being a disgruntled designer. And I have also blamed others for this in the past. Bryan Zmijewski That is why these skills for a design strategist are so important. What you will find that they are less about design itself and more about the skill of presenting the idea to a team. Checkout the series
Bryan presents perceptions of design that business people have. Some of the skills include coming up with numbers. Though not very fond of, I have learnt that numbers break the ice a lot of times. The one that hit me hard was about real-time performance.
As a designer you must be able to use your unique skills of visual thinking to rally people in a room. While this may come more naturally to some over others, it is a skill that will improve with practice. You need to be comfortable presenting whiteboard sketches in front of a group–no matter how much you wish you could call a time out to whip up something on your laptop, you’ll lose momentum. If you can’t think and draw at the same time you’re going to limit your ability to listen to other ideas in the room–so practice at your own internal meetings until you’re ready for your public debut.
I think this makes a lot of difference. Ability of visual thinking, ability to think and draw at the same time is extremely important. Being only a designer is not enough, it is equally important to be able to convince that the design is good, if not, make it good.
