Design Challenges

One of my biggest design challenges is to reconcile usability and visual design. We know that both are very important to any project, but we seem to have severe difficulties putting both in perspective. I haven’t discovered a good way to talk about it yet, either on my own or from someone else.

Another challenge (that will always be a challenge, I think) is writing well. That’s one of the reasons why I started this blog, and I’m finding that the well of learning is never dry. I go back and re-read posts and wonder if anybody understood what I was trying to say, let alone agreed or disagreed with it.

A big challenge that I’ll be facing soon is moving bokardo to a new host. I’ve run out of bandwidth here, as many of you probably have noticed. (when there is any sort of increase of traffic, the site goes down). My plan is to host it myself, running it off a Mac Mini, the headless Mac I’ve been waiting patiently for that has finally arrived.

Geez…this list could go on for a long time, but I’ll finish with the challenge of pushing myself to keep writing regularly here. If any of you have ever tried to sustain a blog (that’s the word: sustain), you’ll know that you hit a wall every now and then. Interestingly, the reason why I keep going is not so much of what I say here, but of what the side benefits are of sustaining it. Meeting and talking with like-minded individuals, and the discipline of work.

My biggest challenge comes from the programming behind my designs. I always struggle to balance reusability with specialization in my code. I’m constantly aware of the fact that the more reusable my code is, the more time it’ll save me on future projects. Then I start to realize the timeline for this project is too tight to worry about reusability and it’s actually slowing me down. And so I get locked in an endless cycle, never sure which way to go, always hoping for that one project with a pefect timeline to hone a personal toolkit and also build something really special.

Tim, I know exactly what you mean. I do it all the time when I’m writing PHP: should I make this a reusable class or should I just bust out the code straightaway? Will I ever need to do this in any other project? It’s painful.

My design challenge is what to do next. I’ve been a designer for almost 10 years now, from junior UI designer to senior Information Architect (with small sidesteps to project manager and consultant) and wonder what my next job title will be. I am quite sure there’s enough left to be designed in a user-centered way, and I am not done evangelizing.

Should I go into management and influence a department of other designers plus some fellow managers that way, become a consultant again and influence whole companies, or should I really start writing that book and influence readers worldwide… Maybe a bit of everything would be a good first step?

My design challenge is mostly conceptual. I can make anything happen after I visualize it. But usually nothing springs to mind.