Key art director skills
The art director is not a senior designer.
A senior designer needs to be given a quality design when, as an art director, much more skills are required to develop in the profession.
Here are some very important ones:
Knowledge of guidelines design-systems and interface patterns
Designing and researching popular services and materials, the art director collects dozens of interface patterns, the understanding of which plays a key role in his development.
Understanding business
The main task of the art director is to adjust the direction of his colleagues so that the design would solve the business tasks and not satisfy the designer's ego. Without understanding the business objectives, it will not be possible to create a quality design.
Understanding design
Understanding the fundamental rules of development, an art director can choose the best design solutions, focusing not only on the convenience for users but also the speed of development.
Сommunicability
As an art director needs to communicate regularly with designers and customers, the ability to find common ground with different people is a key skill for him or her.
Understanding users
The designer should understand the target audience of the service, as it affects most of the decisions made.
Each audience has its own needs. Here is an example of Airbnb. It is important for travelers to feel the local flavor and live in a clean room, and the owners want to see decent guests and get paid quickly.
To understand users, you need to gather feedback and communicate with industry experts.
In the first place, you can get help from the support team (if any), letters to the open box and comments on social media.
The second is face-to-face meetings. Moreover, not only with users, but also with people who are not using your service at the moment, but in theory can. Having understood their point of view, you will be able to identify weaknesses and improve the product.
Professional contacts
I know a designer from the region who kept a table with leading art directors and wrote to them with a request to meet them upon arrival in Moscow. Thanks to this, he was building relationships and learning about the latest industry news.
A few months later, when a vacancy opened up in a large studio, he received a good job offer. Not because he was better than the others, but because he was simply known (another year and a half passed and he switched from one studio to another, taking the place of a partner).
Professional contacts are not a blessing, but an opportunity to realize one's skills, attract promising initiatives and accelerate one's development using the resources of other people.
Therefore, any designer should not neglect to communicate with professionals. And not only from design but also from other areas.
Customer Journey Map
CJM is a table that vertically (columns) contains the steps that the user must take to reach the target. For example, when you buy tickets on the airline's website, the columns of your table would look like this: the website, filling out a form (from where, where, by whom, and when), searching for the right flight, viewing the details, and paying.
Horizontally (row) there is the following:
User purpose
In this case, the purpose of the user is not a global goal (to buy tickets), but a local one at this stage, for example, to fill out a form or select a suitable flight.
Key action
Based on the objective, a key action can be identified. At the stage of filling out the form, it will be the transition to the list of flights according to the selected parameters.
Mood
Here it is necessary to define how the user feels at each stage and try to avoid discontent or confusion. If several stages in a row go negative emotions, there is a high probability that the user will not continue to work with the service.
Possible problems
This is an extremely important stage to think about. It may include both errors from inattention and misunderstanding of the interface.
Solutions
This stage is closely related to the previous one. For each problem, we need to find 1-2 solutions. Usually, after identifying possible problems, the solutions become obvious. That's why CJM is very helpful in designing interfaces.
Many people think that the success of a project only depends on experience, so they underestimate the importance of the process. The use of CJM helps to minimize the lack of experience due to a thought-out sequence of actions.
Making CJM takes a lot of time, but don't forget that it is also a design. Perhaps it is even more design than what we do in a graphical editor.
Mudbird
Mudboard is a visual selection of elements that should push the designer to a certain mood, which will help to choose the right style for the project.
The style can be fashionable, boring, futuristic or any other style, it does not matter at all. It is only important that he awakens the emotions necessary for business.
Mudboard is easiest to assemble using Pinterest. Besides it, you can use Buckets on Dribbble, Moodboard in InVision and any other way (even though the folder on the desktop) that you find convenient.
