When a designer is working on a new project, he/she can easily get immersed (and distracted) by the infinite pool of creative choices he/she can make. From colors to typography. From button types to the visual balance of elements. However, digital product design is much more than creating award-winning layouts and great looking Dribbble shots. That’s just one (actually small) part of a well-designed product!

The harder challenges designers face, often disregarded by the over focus on the creative process, are:

• get to know the people who will use the product;

• understand how people will use the product and in which context;

• understand why people will use the product;

• get to know the product’s business model and the business constraints;

• understand how the company behind the product is relying on it to generate revenue and growth.

These points seem obvious, right? But for (usually) emotional individuals like designers, sometimes it’s not. Designers tend to give more value to the creative and visual side of things, rather than the objective and logical side.

For that reason, often, the role of the Creative Director is not to give ‘design feedback’, but to reinforce the user and business perspective to the design team.

Ultimately, magic happens when a beautiful design is combined with user and business awareness. That’s what we strive for at Pixelmatters, everyday. And that’s why we are confident to say that all our clients have seen significant improvements in User Engagement and Business Metrics, after working with us, either it being on a Marketing website, a Mobile App or a Web App.

At the end of the day, those are the “awards” that matter the most. 🙂