The question:
As a new designer, I'm still struggling to work both quickly and precisely. It's not uncommon for me to find myself overwhelmed with the amount of work ahead of me. I get twisted around the axle on straightforward details like the arrangement of elements, button styles, and text styles.
I expect myself to be able to complete basic design assignments on time, but I don't want my work to fall flat in the process — or to hold the team back. I know I can always ask for help, but I don't want to have to ask about each and every element if I'm meant to figure it out on my own.
And as soon as I think I’m ready to push a screen for review, I notice all the little errors. What technical advice do you have for me?
The answer:
We creative types can be hard on ourselves sometimes, can’t we? Welcome to the club!
You’re right to think about how your work influences your teammates, and to strive for that fine balance between speed, quality, and autonomy. Still, working in a state of panic isn’t sustainable — and will prevent you from thinking clearly, which will derail you from your goal! So how should you address this challenge?
First, get some perspective.
It takes practice, but it will get better: There are uncomfortable phases in every design career where you don't have many levers to pull on speed and quality because you're still developing those instincts through reps. Eventually the pixel-level stuff will move to the back of your brain and you'll have more capacity for problem-solving while you design. One thing you can do to ease the process is to keep honing your personal record-keeping techniques for tracking requirements. The more project details you can move out of your head and onto paper/text, the clearer your head will be to focus on the design part.
Calibrate your workload: Is the timeline realistic to start with? We all get faster with time, but even an experienced designer can get tangled up in an aggressive deadline. So first, gauge whether the timeline seems fair for your experience level. The deadline might be non-negotiable, but it could give you license to go a little easier on yourself.
Everybody gets pixel paralysis: Even the best designers look at a blank canvas in bewilderment. Trust you’re not alone.
Next, try these techniques.
Photo by Manny Pantoja on Unsplash
Fork your designs and try alternate ideas: If you’re in a hurry and stuck on a decision, duplicate your work and try it a few ways. Extra art boards and file storage cost nothing these days. Then toggle between ideas to pick a favorite. It's unproductive to have your designer voice and critic voice on at the same time. Our brains are most comfortable with multiple choice. The best designers allow themselves freedom to generate lots of ideas on instinct, and then find greatness through cutting and editing.
Look away: The more times you can set aside a design and then look at it again, the more opportunities for improvement you’ll see. A good night’s sleep is a big help, but even on a time crunch you can apply this in small ways. When he's got multiple projects going, Principal UX Consultant Chad Currie will force himself to hop between them in 20-minute intervals to break the pixel blindness that develops looking at one thing for too long.
Change your view: Painters periodically rotate their canvas to force themselves to re-see the composition. Don’t design software upside down, but do look for ways to reframe your work in progress. Creative Director Jeff Battson likes to publish his Sketch work to a private Zeplin screen while it's in progress just to see it in a different context, and it works!
Make a power sketch: Switch to paper in short bursts — from 30 seconds to a couple of minutes depending on the problem. The freedom of analog drawing rolls up all the benefits of items 1, 2, and 3 into one quick exercise.
Get a second opinion: Gut check with others early. Sometimes, we’re so focused on solving a problem, we might miss that we’re solving the wrong problem. We’re all eager to figure things out on our own, but consider whether independence truly produces better results.
Pair up: Pairing is one of the most powerful ways to work through problems and boost your own skills at the same time. At any time, on our team, there's probably a designer who's light and willing to pair briefly (or interested in a break from their own grind!). Sometimes, just explaining the problem to someone is useful.
Think like the sculptors: For Founder Erin Young, timeline anxiety is relieved once something is on paper. So she’ll rush to get a rough draft out there without sweating all the details, and then she’s able to feel less worried. She’ll then come back across in waves of increasing precision until it’s finalized. (Pro tip: pretty much all great art and literature is made this way!)
Build a smart foundation: With components (Figma), symbols (Sketch), and states (Axure), you can create reusable elements that take the precision factor out of reuse. Associate UX Designer Darvinder Kochhar likes to nest symbols inside of symbols so that he can turn elements on and off and see them move up and down a design with perfect spacing he sets once.
Perfectionism never goes away, but with experience, you’ll gain muscle memory and instinct that will make each task less overwhelming. Best of luck in your practice!