Introduction

[00:00:00]
>> Hello, and welcome to this course on mastering the design process. And whatever your background, I'm pretty convinced that this course is gonna prove helpful. So whether you work in-house, whether you're a freelancer, whether you work for an agency. The advice that I'm gonna give today should really help you to get control of design projects.

[00:00:20]
And the advice that I'm gonna give will apply pretty much, whether you're working on an app, whether you're working on a mobile app or a web app, it makes no difference, whether you're working on a website. So whatever you're working on, the advice I'm gonna give should help you better manage those design projects and avoid some of the pitfalls that come with design.

[00:00:43]
Cuz I'm guessing that because you are watching this course on Frontend Masters that you love your code and you love doing coding. But my question for you is, can you say the same about design? The truth is, design projects are pretty challenging, aren't they? When it comes to coding, it either works or it doesn't.

[00:01:04]
Yes, you can debate about the best way of coding and how to go about approaching it in the right way. But at the end of the day, there's nobody really sitting over your shoulder, sharing their personal impressions of it, are there? And those people that are commenting on your code, at least, probably know something about code, your average stakeholder or client isn't gonna do that.

[00:01:27]
But design, on the other hand, everybody's got an opinion about, everybody thinks they're right, and that is what we're gonna get into in this course. We're gonna look at how to overcome some of those challenges that we face as designers running design projects. But before we get into that, I think it's worth just me introducing myself a little bit first.

[00:01:50]
My name is Paul Boag. I've been working in this industry for over 27 years. Now, I'm ashamed to say, 13 of which I have been involved in running my own agency. So I'm very familiar with running design projects or that my agency was a full stack agency, we did both design and development.

[00:02:10]
And then since then, I've spent the last six, seven years, whatever, I can't remember exactly, working on advising and helping other agencies and freelancers to optimize their processes, and how they go about working. So I'm very familiar with some of the challenges that go around working on design projects.

[00:02:29]
And I've worked on projects for all sizes of clients as well. And so whether you happen to work for large multinational companies, or whether you work for small startups, the advice I'm gonna share today, I think is gonna be relevant. No matter the size of the company worked for, no matter the sector that you work for.

[00:02:49]
So what am I gonna share? Well basically, what I'm gonna share is my experience of running design projects in the last 27 years. Experience that I regularly share online via my blog, and my books, and my emails. And actually, in this slide deck that I'm gonna be sharing with you, I've got links and detailed information on everything I've talked about on my site.

[00:03:13]
So there'll be links that you can click through, and go read more information. I've got links to all of the apps, etc., that I cover on this. So the slide deck, I'm hoping, is gonna be really useful for you after the fact. And I've got a lot of information that may be, you're not gonna be able to read everything that's on the screen as we go through, but afterwards you can return to it.

[00:03:33]
So there you go, that's a little bit of background information. Let's now, dive in and look at what we're gonna cover today. We're essentially gonna look at four key areas, okay? And these really are the four factors that make the biggest difference over whether a project like a design-based project is successful or not.

[00:03:53]
So the first one is how you actually run the design project, how you organize it, how you structure it, the different processes that you use. All of that kind of information will help you tailor your projects in such a way that you get less pushback when it comes to the design.

[00:04:11]
And don't worry those of you who are very technical-based, that doesn't undermine how you will inherently want to work on projects. In fact, it complements it quite well. So we're gonna look at how to run a design project really well. We're also gonna look at how to go about producing those initial design concepts in a way that, again, it reduces the amount of friction, and conflict, and disagreement people get about the design.

[00:04:41]
And people coming up with comments like, I don't like the color, or it just doesn't wow me, or can you make my logo bigger. All the classic things that you hear when you have to deal with design. Once we've looked at how to produce the initial design, then we're gonna get into, well, how do you present that in a compelling way?

[00:05:01]
And specifically, how do you manage the feedback you get on design? And ensure that that feedback doesn't become really problematic, all right? Then finally, we're gonna look at what happens when that design is actually built, okay? So whether you're building the design yourself or you're getting someone else to build it for you.

[00:05:27]
There can often be compromises made during the build process, and that's fine, and that's as it should be. But how do we ensure that the design survives that process and more importantly, survives post launch, right? So once your website is out in the world, what happens to it then?

[00:05:47]
Because, let's be honest, we've all been in situations where we've gotten our portfolio, we worked on this site and it looked great in the screenshot. And then people click through, and go and see the live site, and it looks like a train wreck, because it hasn't survived the test of time.

[00:06:03]
So to the person that said about they're looking to learn more design and how to become a better designer, that there is already a course that we produced about how to create compelling websites that convert. So you might wanna check that one out, because that will be much more helpful in doing the design fundamentals and what makes good design.

[00:06:28]
This course is more about how to get that sign off, [LAUGH] which is the critical thing, and how to keep the design moving through the process. So, yeah, I think this will be from the audience you've just described. It's gonna be a helpful presentation to anybody, really, who is either actively involved in design, wants to be doing more design work or as one of the people here today, described it is just designed curious.

[00:07:00]
This will be a really great course for all of you guys.