How to explain to the project manager where his work ends and the work of the interface designer begins?

Question

Project management

There is such a conflict at work. I am engaged in interface design, they brought us a girl who leads projects and has absolutely no idea who should be responsible for what at work.
After creating an interface prototype, she changes it as she sees fit, asks the team if they like it or not, as she believes that everyone needs to be pleased. The interface goes from hand to hand. It is not difficult to assume that there is nothing left of a good, working interface. I try to explain to her that my job is to understand what purpose the application should serve and find a solution for it. But her opinion is that you need to ask everyone if it looks good, change it yourself and then only send it to the customer.
The authorities are busy with their own affairs and do not participate in the disagreement. It makes it very difficult for me to work.
The question is how to explain to the project manager that this is my job. Is there any article that describes what the designer does and why it is needed?

Answer 1

There is nothing wrong with the manager discussing with all employees the interface designed by the designer. On the one hand, this is some kind of testing and the opportunity to pay attention to the nuances that the zainer did not think about or did not attach much importance to. On the other hand, this is an opportunity to participate in the development yourself, to improve your skills. And it can also be a good team-building factor so that everyone feels involved in the product being created.
But there is one nuance that the manager should understand. His role - a very important role - is to establish communication between people, formulate tasks, supervise processes, control time. Relevant specialists should be directly involved in the implementation. Therefore, if the manager is so enthusiastic that he wants to discuss the interface with all employees, let him do it. But at the same time, let him fix the list of voiced problems and proposals received during the discussions and then present them to the designer. A designer can reject some of the problems as “the opinion of the incompetent” or “a matter of taste”, while others can listen and make changes to the interface. The designer must be able to explain all this to the manager and give him the updated interface.
Creating an interface is the job of a designer. The manager should raise questions and voice real or potential problems to the designer. But edits and alterations should be done by the designer himself, with his own hands. It is also important to understand in what form the manager should set tasks for the designer. It shouldn't ask the designer to "make the button red instead of green". He must formulate the problem as a whole - for example, “we need to double the number of clicks on the button” - so that the designer himself thinks about how best to solve it and proposes his own version.
It is also very important to understand that in case of controversial issues, the right of final decision should belong to the specialist who is directly involved in the implementation. You need to understand that it is the company that pays the specialist for his expert skills. If they are questioned every time, then it turns out that the company is wasting its money. And if he spends, then you need to be able to trust a specialist in the area for which he is responsible in the company, agreeing with his opinion in controversial situations.
However, the specialist must be able to show flexibility and responsiveness. He should not just kick the manager with his "nonsense". You need to be able to adequately respond to these nonsense: giving arguments, experience of successful decisions, and sometimes doing something at the request of the manager with further demonstration that the new version is worse. Sometimes it takes time for the manager to learn to trust the designer and begin to understand which issues are important to discuss and discuss, and which ones can be left entirely to the discretion of the designer.

Answer 2

IMHO. The design needs to be shown and discussed, but the final decision on making changes to the design should be made by one person who understands something in interfaces (an adequate project manager is more suitable for this position than a designer :) )
Designers (not all) have such a trait character: "I drew everything looks cool, but you screw up the design." At the same time, many do not think about the business tasks that this design should solve.
Well, if the design went from hand to hand and reached the top management, then expect trouble :)

Answer 3

1. You should ask colleagues, not the project manager, to get an outsider's perspective.
2. You and PM must agree on a prototype, prove the feasibility of your decisions. If you can't, then you're a bad designer. When I receive comments on my prototypes, I listen to comments, agree with something, defend something, give something to the discretion of PM.
The main thing is not to close.

Answer 4

Have you tried asking her? A designer must be able to justify his work, otherwise it turns out that you are making a project based only on "your vision" and it turns out that it also seems to be not quite right. For example: how can a survey of employees improve the interface if they are not the target audience? On what does she base her edits? Is she ready to present the project to the client and justify her changes to him? And most importantly, does she agree that she herself pays for the time spent on editing her edits? Since the client or the company pays for client edits.

Answer 5

It's one thing to draw an interface, it's another thing to wrap it up with features. From experience, I often met moments when the process of drawing layouts was between the analyst and the client personally. And then the layout went to work. And the sadness began when the client was already happy that there would be a certain control or interface element on the layout, and the developer, when he saw the layout, said "you are awesome. what is it all about? where did you find it. here you have radio buttons and that's it."
Therefore, my interface design process is as follows:
1. Draw an idea
2. Pull out some middle in the project topic, show and redo 20%
3. Show the frontend to the developer, move it to another
4. Show to the client
If the manager does 2,3,4 points, then she does everything right. If the process goes from 1 to 4 passing 2.3, then this is a mistake. And whoever asks there, this is already a matter of agreement in the team. And just the manager should initiate discussions about the agreement on feedback within the team. All important processes should have feedback from stakeholders inside or outside the team. Communication on the shoulders of the manager.

Answer 6

"Psychologist mode":
The point is not to explain to the manager where his work ends, but the work of the designer begins,
but that you sallivana are unhappy that the girl invades your personal space and may even take away some of your glory. After all, when it was not there, then all the glory for convenient interfaces went to you, and then a newcomer comes and teaches how to live "experienced", which allegedly discriminates against you as a professional. And you have a fear that the team or even the client may have the idea that you are not really needed, because the interface was "made by the team", and you only "drew" like that (but we all know that this is not true).
Your manager girl is wrong too. It interferes with the work of the whole team and not only you. The purpose of any usability test is to identify problems. Participants should not come up with solutions themselves, because only you know the whole picture, but they do not, and their solutions can "give birth" to problems in other places.
Thus, when this girl takes up your interface again, I advise you to explain to her how usability testing is done and that you do not expect solutions from her, but are open to discussing identified problems in the interface.
It is also important that the guys in the office match the target of the product being developed. If this condition is not met, then they cannot be testers and they must be sought, for example, in social networks. networks.
I will also add that it would be useful to see how different and unfamiliar people use the interface, and not the same ones, because. regular testers can get used to your "tricks" and third-party ones will not understand them the first time. And for them, you need to come up with the mechanics of learning.

Answer 7

A good interface would hardly be fixed) Well, your colleagues are still buggers - no professional ethics)

Answer 8

>The authorities are busy with their own affairs and are not involved in the disagreement.
I would quit this company. The bosses who don’t give a damn about the processes within their own enterprise will see through the business.

Answer 9

How to explain to the project manager where his work ends and the work of the interface designer begins?

Tell the manager to make the interface himself if he/she is so smart.
I usually give a comparison with a dentist or an auto mechanic - no one tells them how to properly treat a tooth or repair an engine. In the same way, there is no doubt about the designer, because. an experienced designer does his job with an eye to the future, and if some of his decisions seem not very successful, then this is only at first glance.
The thesis that the design / interface should be shown to everyone is nonsense, mere mortals themselves may not know what they want and are completely unaware of the consequences of their desires, and the designer's task is to find a compromise for everyone, and not just for a handful of closest colleagues.
As an example of leading everyone on occasion, I now recall a completely anti-usable feint - the emergence of a picture description on top of the picture during hover. Absolutely infuriates and is now found absolutely everywhere.