Providing Justifications for Design

I loved Geometry in high school. It was easily my favorite mathematics course. In Geometry you would be required to provide a justification rule for each step in solving a geometric puzzle. The awesome part was solving the puzzle. The not awesome part was remembering all those justifications.

When designing a new interface with an agile team you often have to shoot down ideas quickly so that the wrong things aren't built two hours later. In order to shoot down an idea, your team mates will want to know why. Eventually they'll just learn not to ever suggest a drop-down menu as a quick fix. They might not remember that one would never have a drop down menu for an unexpected list of items, but they'll remember that you give them some demon-possessed glare every time they suggest it.

Now, in our guts we all know these rules, they become instincts. Designer survival instincts, as I like to call them. However, when working with a team, you have to instantly recall these rules. Maybe not the exact rule as you read it on use.it, but at very least the reason. And if you can't provide that reason within .75 seconds of them saying "Why?" to your "NO!", then they'll over-rule you and you've failed your users.

Just like you would fail a question in a Geometry quiz. And if you missed the first justification for a design and you have to build lots more architecture around that element, then you just might as well have failed on all accounts.

Granted, Agile is purportedly able to make many changes over time, but I have yet to see this be an actual result of this form of development. Employers tend to use it more heavily as an excuse to get half-assed things out the door in a portion of the time it would take to do things correctly.

Sadly, I don't have a solution to this problem, other than to highly recommend knowing your design rules and guidelines and be prepared to defend your decisions quickly and with justification. The good news is that eventually your team mates will begin to trust your finely tuned designer survival skills and you'll be spending less time defending your work and more time designing.