I met some friends for dinner earlier this year, and after we had shared a bottle of wine or two, I noticed that we had become the loudest table at the otherwise quiet restaurant. A few of my friends at the table were designers. They were sharing stories about their time in the trenches, trying to create art for people who, more often than not, didn’t understand their craft.
“It should be blue, but not too blue,” one said, quoting a previous client of his. “Kind of like an orange-ish blue.” The other designers at the table laughed and slapped their knees in recognition of the absurd direction.
“How about this one,” another began. “Please make something exactly like this—only it should be better!” Again, they roared with laughter. I laughed along with them, but underneath I was self-conscious. I work with designers every day. Were they off somewhere cracking each other up about my requests?
I thought of this evening when the data came in from a survey we conducted at Wrike about the biggest challenges designers face when collaborating with non-designers. Luckily, the data also provided some great insight into some potential solutions to these all-too-common issues. There are some easy habits that non-designers can adopt that would help to smooth collaboration and result in visually striking creative.
Designers are the design experts
I think what made my friends at dinner laugh so hard was that on so many occasions, non-designers felt that they knew more about design than they did. According to our data, it’s more common than one may think.
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