Yay, let's start designing? Except that we won't, you guys, because a design project doesn't necessarily start with design, you might be thinking "OMG, what do you mean the design doesn't start with designing? What do I do?
That's exactly what you need to know, guys, what are you gonna do? You have to at least have an idea of what you want to do, you gotta have an idea of deadlines, you have to have an idea about the size of the project, of what will be done, and of course, what will be done, can change a bit during the process and we'll talk about that in more detail, but you have to have at least an idea to get started. Usually this idea is done through a document called “Briefing” I will leave a template for this Briefing at the end, we're gonna talk about it in more detail.
But for now, so we can start understanding it, I will show you a flowchart in which I better explain some of the things we have to know before starting the design. So, before design, ask these questions. This is part of a post I made for social media, I'll leave the link to the post and on LinkedIn you can even download it, ok?
But before the design, ask these questions. “What questions, Mai? ” for example, who is the client?
And when I say client, guys, I'll probably talk about clients more often during the course. Client is not necessarily an external person, for example, "I'm a freelancer and my client is another company", but it can also be, for example, that I work inside a company. The client is the one who is requesting the project, ok?
So, the client is always that person, and it could also be someone from within your own company who gave you a task. Do you know who that person is? Do you know who they are?
Are they someone you know? Someone you don't know? If it's someone you don't know, for example, who is this client?
Try to understand "what does this person like? ", "what does this person not like? " How do they work?
For example, if I see that a client of mine. . .
if I already understand, of course that over time, this feeling comes to you more organically, but when I see it, ah, the client… if I already feel that the client is more disorganized, I already start to ask at the beginning, "look, I need you to be at the meeting", the person was late to the meeting twice already. . .
"look, if you're late again, we won't have this meeting" and when you start doing that, you start to dictate the rules of your design, of your work. This is important, because if you don't take these precautions, over time it may be that some people try to. .
. take advantage of your work a little and it's okay if that happens in the beginning, we learn, it will probably happen to you, it has already happened a lot to me and that's why I learned these little tricks, you know? But to understand who this customer is, try to understand, for example, if it is a company, what is this brand?
How does this brand communicate? In terms of shape, Does it use more curves? Does it use more straight lines?
What colors do they use? Is it a brand that looks younger? Is it a brand that seems more traditional?
So, try to understand everything that has to do with this universe of who your customer is. If you can, even ask people, “What are the references? What are you expecting?
Do you have any materials that you saw and thought were cool? Are there any other places you found interesting? It may not even be similar to our project, but anything you liked…” for you to start understanding what this person who requested you a service is currently into, because as much as we do our design project thinking about the user, it is also necessary to meet the expectations of the client, of the person who requested us that project, ok?
So try to understand who this customer is. Besides, you also have to understand, for example, what that person's goal is. Do you know what this person is looking for with this project?
What is the purpose of the person who requested you the project? Like, can you write in one sentence what you hope to achieve by the end of this project? As long as you can't do that… IT'S IMPORTANT!
If you don't know, talk to the client and align that with them, and then you can write it in one sentence. If you know, also write it in a sentence, because you will get that sentence later on and you will validate it: is your objective, this sentence that you wrote, exactly the same sentence that the client would have written? Send it to the person and say “Hey, is this really our goal?
Can you confirm, is this what we have to achieve? ” Because if at any point in the project that changes, it's very easy for you to go back and say, “Look, remember our goal? It was this one”.
If it changes at some point in the project, it may even change, you have to make it very clear to the person, “Look, we're going to change because of this and that… Do you agree? Are you in? We have our new objective here, is that it?
" And you always write in one sentence, okay? Ideally, we don't want it to change a lot, but it may be that during the process a change will come up, especially because a design process is never a static process, guys. You can't treat design as a series of little steps, which is always like, “Oh, as we already had a goal, we can't change the goal anymore and we have to follow…” Guys, it doesn't work like that.
Design is a living subject. Design is planning, organizing, structuring things. And that changes all the time.
There are many variables, many things involved. And your role as a designer is to start understanding these nuances, okay? So, align it very well with your client, what your goal is.
If this changes during the project, make sure to align it again and ensure that everyone is on the same page, that the expectations are exactly the same, alright? On top of that, you already have the objective, you already know who the client is … A very important point: how big is this project? Design projects, guys, it increases very quickly, very very very quickly, you can start with one screen and then it becomes two, three, ten, fifteen, twenty, thousand screens, there's no problem increasing it as long as it's all very well aligned, for example, I'm a freelancer, I charge per screen, usually I charge by project, anyway, I put the price of the screen there.
But if I don't have an idea of how much I charge per screen and my client doesn't have the same idea that I have, soon a project that used to be ten screens, turns into fifty and it happens, believe me, it happens. It turns into even more than that often times. And like, since I have it all neatly agreed with my clients, it's very easy to say, “Look guys, the project is getting bigger, can I stop at ten screens or are we going to go on?
” And then the budget increases, the deadline changes and all of that is going to change. So that's why before starting I have it very clear, ok, what do we expect from this project? How many screens do you have in mind?
I make the client say a number, even if they need to guess it, I say: how many screens do you foresee? Because my budget is going to be based on that. And if you are working inside a company, make sure to have it written down, what do we imagine in a design project?
“Oh, I can imagine this many screens… What's the deadline? How long do we have to finish this? ” Deadlines are very important because, for example, in the design research stages, there are giant companies where people spend years and years and years researching a tiny little thing and it's okay because they have a deadline, they have a team, they have all of that and it works for them.
However, for example, I work as a freelancer, for a client's project. Imagine if for each client, I would have to spend years and years and years in the research stage. I would never finish any design project.
When I align it with my clients, “Look, this is the deadline", I tell them myself, "Look, based on this deadline you gave me, my suggestion is do this, this and this because of this, this and this ". So, having a deadline helps us to bring clear deadlines and this is very important to align the expectations and the size of the project, because when we define what we are going to do within that scope, we already have a bigger idea of the size of that project and it's important to have that well aligned before starting the project because it's quite easy for it to become a snowball. .
. And if I'm saying that, people, it's because I've already struggled a lot with these kind of issues, you know? It's a little detail, it's silly, and it seems like nothing, but if you don't have everything very well aligned, very well written down, the chances of it becoming a mess are super high.
So, now you know, write everything down. Also, do you know the project's deadline? Like I said, if you don't know, align it with the client.
The deadline you have has to be exactly the same as your client's, you need to have it all aligned and, you know, write it down later. After that, do you and your client know who's responsible for the project's approval? Do you know why I'm saying this?
It's very common that a whole team is asking for a design project, okay, no problem. But then there was a disagreement within that team, two people want this, two people think that, another two think differently and nobody decides anything. There must always be a decision maker.
So, on the client's side, the side of the person who requested the project, always choose ONE person. I mean, you should ask the person: “Who is the decision maker? Who is going to take the decision if we have a disagreement?
Who will have the final word? ” And that person, in every meeting, that person has to be there, okay? You have to put your foot down a little and say "Look, without that, unfortunately, I can't do my job", because that way you will first guarantee that the meetings will be effective because you will have decision-making power in the meeting, that is, someone will be able to decide in this meeting, and give the final word if necessary, of course your word as a designer matters and matters a lot, especially if you find clients who really value design, they will want to know your opinion, they will want to know what you think, but in the end, there's someone hiring your service, regardless of whether it is within a company or not, your boss giving you a task for example or if it is a freelancer, someone is always in charge of your service and it is important for you to have this idea of who this person is, the one who will take the decisions.
Also, after you have all this decided, my suggestion is for you to make a briefing document with all these little details, I'll show you the template soon, and this template you can send to your client later on. If the client says “Oh, I didn't say that, I said something else”, then realign it again, essentially, rewrite this document again and again until everything is fully aligned, before this document is fully aligned, like, we are thinking the same thing, objective is the same, deadline is the same, everything is aligned, we know who the decision maker is. .
. After you have everything lined up, neatlhy, then you can think about starting the design, ok? And for us to finish before Alfred's big Challenge, I'm going to show you guys in that little Notion template of ours for organization, the briefing template.
So here, with our Notion open with that cute little project organization template, you already know, but in any case, in the description of this video there's a link to the lesson, and in that link there's the link to this Notion template that is about how to follow the lessons. In this template here, click on “Project name”, which is the project's template. And in the project part, here, there is a “Project Briefing”, which is a page that I created.
I left only a few things with templates here for you and the briefing is one of them, because most of the things I want you guys to build and I'm going to tease you a lot about it during the course, okay? So, here, I clicked on the project's “Briefing”, you'll see that here is a briefing model, on the internet, if you look for “Design Briefing Models" you'll find thousands, so search a little, see what the questions are, but the most important thing is that you understand what the scope of the project is before you start designing, ok? Add there, for example, the name of the person in charge, here "Questions - Budget", it's because, usually, before I send a budget to the client, I already ask this type of question, this is the model I actually use.
So, I adapted it a little bit, but most of these questions, I use with my clients before budgeting, you know? None of this is made up because I just saw it on a random place. .
. No! It works, I use it with my clients.
It works really well for me and I'm passing it on to you guys because I'm nice. Here, then, you add what is the service, what are you going to do? Ah, it's a screen, it's a website, it's an application of something.
. . , in short, put it there in short.
How many screens? Even if it's just an estimation, how many screens? If you include desktop, if you include mobile, which one is the priority, for example, everyone says, "Oh, you gotta do 'mobile first", but there are things that don't work when you try to do mobile first Understand a little bit about the scope of the project, ask the client, “Do you have data on what your users use the most?
What is the project? " Anyway, ask a little more to understand what is the most important, agree with the client, see if you really need both, or if you don't… Do you need prior research? What is the product phase?
I ask. . .
In this lesson, in this course, we will talk about the entire research part and our project will have the research part, but usually not, but very often when I talk to my clients, often times the clients themselves already have a team that has already done all the research part and when it gets to me, it already has a good research base done. So, I can take advantage of the research they already have. So, I don't necessarily have to do all the research , basically, I do more of a compilation of the researches that they have, in short, to see if they need something more or not, but I can already get an idea and I don't always need to do all the design steps.
And that's why I'm saying that design is not a static process, you know? Not necessarily, we will talk a lot about Design Thinking in this course, but you don't necessarily have to follow it in a strict way, blindly, without changing anything, ok? So, it's in there too… Basis for the budget, you don't need to ask that if you don't want to, if the client has an idea, deadline, to whom you send this budget.
. . And here there are even some more detailed questions, many of these things, we sometimes discover during the design process, but I like to ask and have this already sort of mapped out before the start of the project, because even if it changes, I already I know what my client is expecting and it's easy for me to say to him, “It's changing because of this, this, this, are you OK with that?
” That way you can have this really cool alignment, okay? So here you will have the link to this briefing as well, all neatly in the lesson, ok? And of course, we couldn't finish this class, guess what, without what?
Without Alfred's Challenge, guys. Alfred is here, talking in my ear, that in this class you are going to have a really cool challenge. Your challenge is to choose a project to do during this course.
Think of a problem that needs solving, something that you can solve, that you would like to do a project from start to finish on, it could be an app, it could be a website. My suggestion is for that to be something that has an interface, but if you'd like to solve something else through this process that we will learn in our lessons, you can do it too, but I recommend trying something with an interface, a website, an application, something along that line. Think, focus, what is a problem that needs solving?
What is something that can be improved? Think a lot about it and try to find a problem for you to solve. So, I left a list with some suggestions on the website but I prefer that you don't use it.
Even if it is for you to stimulate your creativity a little, a little of this active search. Search for problems. See what people are complaining about, for example, one of these days I've made a proposal for a re-layout of the (Brazilian) Income Tax System.
We know it's a problem. We see people complaining. So, see what people are complaining about, for example, and try to find your list.
If you don't have any ideas none, none, none at all, you can get something here from the website, but you already know, right, guys? I left here several suggestions for projects and stuff, a lot of things, but I'd rather you avoid them, ok? And do you want to know more?
Do you want to know how to really start designing? Finally, let's start the design… You already know, you can click on this card that's there on your screen, because from the next class on, we'll start talking a little more about what this whole design process really is about. So come with me.
