Design Early, Design Better

This is cross-post of an article I published on HubSpot's wiki on October 24, 2017, as part of a broad effort to reshape design processes across the organization.

TL;DR: Reach out to design early, during a project's inception, not when you're close to completion. 

How the World Changed

The shift from Industrial, assembly-line value creation towards a more agile, responsive approach is a foregone conclusion for the tech industry. When I began designing in 2002, print remained the dominant force in communications. Once the ink soaks into the paper, all decisions are final and a reprint is prohibitively expensive. Thus begat a linear, waterfall approach to design. Because nothing could be iterated, all content had to be finalized through a rigorous series of cascading approvals.

Then the Internet. Now design work is never done, and analytics allow the designer to gauge the efficacy of her work the moment it launches. Customers expect more from brands, and a firm's ability to listen is a deciding factor in its ability to serve them. Everything sped up.

What It Means For Us

HubSpot lives and breathes this shift. We ship fast, we learn faster, and design is no exception.

To turn around a design project that gets excellent results fast, consider design an agile partner in your work. There are several benefits to this approach:

1. Because most HubSpot communications push out through the design layer, designers can deduplicate, coordinate, and otherwise optimize concurrent communications efforts across HubSpot, saving time and money.
2. Designers understand the capacities and limits of human cognition; how much information we can absorb without losing a key message, for example, which have wide-ranging ramifications on a project's fundamentals.
3. Our membership on the brand team allows us to see project work through a brand lens; is this medium or message consistent with the promises we've made to customers? A strong brand equals more trust, equals higher conversion.

Each piece brings with it a set of functional considerations and limitations that only an experienced maker can understand. Reconciling these early means your team can focus its time and energy on the right things.

The Importance of Key Stakeholders

It's imperative that all key stakeholders are present for an initial conversation, during the project's inception. The next time your team begins a project that you know will benefit from design's support—or if a design need emerges during a project's lifecycle—that is the time to reach out using Brand & Buzz's Creative Request form. Our team will schedule a kick-off to understand the project's fundamentals and consult on its optimization.

We'll have questions. We'll challenge assumptions. This is what great designers do. With an early understanding of your project's goals, hazards, and metrics for success, we can add immense value.