Being a designer at a statup is all about being nimble and less dogmatic in your design outlook. Here is a take at common situations and workarounds for designers working on fast paced agile environments.

1. Designing at
breakneck speed
Anand Nair . Cucumbertown. @anandgrafiti

2. Idealism vs Pragmatism
Credits: Scott Adams
Embrace the “Push” culture
It’s about speed of delivering and evaluating assumptions early

3. There will never be a 100% fool-proof prototype.
Do just enough to get the ball rolling

4. Tools does not matter
as long as you are able
to communicate the
ideas to the team
Make them really
visible

5. Prototypes does not
always need to convey
an interface
Stories help everyone
connect the dots

6. Quality effort spent on
a high fidelity
wireframe ensures
faster visdesign and
development

7. Nobody likes to write documentation.
Nobody will ever read them too!

8. Productivity and
collaboration tools are
great to document
random thought and
ideas

9. Document components
and not pages or
atomic elements

10. Feedbacks are good. Get your work
constantly reviewed

11. Explore focus groups
and communities
where you could
validate your concepts

12. Seek timely opinions
from experts

13. Create a parking lot for
ideas

14. Find time to take a step back and evaluate the parts
you built to see how they fit together

15. Even the giants make inconsistant patterns.
You might be making them too

16. Being hands-on enables faster execution and
less iteration; more power to the designer

17. Things to remember
Its a participatory game. Everyone can design
Be the enabler
Establish the idea first, next the design
Prototype early and often
Being hands on gives more control over your designs

18. Designing at speed means
being nimble and less dogmatic
in your design philosophy

19. Thank you!
anand@cucumbertown.com . @anandgrafiti