'Degree of Freedom' in design depends on…

We have come close to launching a product in some time now. When I look back I realize that what I realize that my “degree of freedom” to design closely depended on – Product Manager and the Front end/Web developer.

The reason I say this is because these are the two important people who really defines what you can do as designers. The Product Manager is product owner of the product thus he is the one who take the final decisions in terms of Business strategy, Engineering and also Design. When I look back I realize that I could ‘explore’ so much because the Product Manager allowed me to do that. It’s very important for a designer to have confidence of the Product Manager and the team. How much you can explore depends on how much “trust” they have on the designer/design team. This is very critical. Also if the product manger is willing to experiment there is a lot of freedom that the designer gets. What’s important here is that both the Designer and to some extent the Product Manager should “own” up the experimentations and their decisions. The most difficult part in design is this ownership of design decisions because of the subjective nature of design. So both Designers should own both the success and failures of UI. And I know its easier said than done; it’s a great responsibility. But the PMs should also own a bit of it as they are also part of most decisions.

The reason I have mentioned the Web/front end developers is because s/he is the person who is responsible for the implementation of the designs. Design doesn’t end by building JPEG screenshots but in final HTML (that what people actually see). And I know building the Front End is whole new ball game. They are essentially two different set of operations with both work with “different parameters and different decisions”. Design is subjective while Web development is very much mathematical. If you are lucky to get a good front end developer you can experiment a lot; else you are restricted by the web devs limitations. Thus the degree of freedom closely depends on the web devs also.

There are a lot of other people also who influence designs. But I guess these are the two very important people who really define what a designer can do. Over all as I have been saying…

The product is as good as the people who build it…to build innovative product you need creative people all along the product cycle.