Photo by Lukas Blazek on Unsplash

He explained it very precisely, that too in pointers.

Early Requirement Gathering

Gather inputs from stakeholders and users at the very beginning of your process.

Spend as much time as possible to understand the problem during this phase. It often becomes difficult and more time consuming to do requirements gathering from stakeholders once you are in the wireframe stage.

When you understand the requirements better, your quality and speed of designing improve tremendously.

Getting over bounded rationality.

Start on paper to unintentionally not imitate designs.

Designers often unknowingly get stuck to designs they have seen or made earlier when designing a new product.

It happens without you noticing. But once you are done with your design, it feels so similar to the previous one.

Especially if it’s a similar product, your new designs may have an overbearing similarity to existing designs. To overcome this, get all the designs in your head out on paper.

Then, start afresh. While this may seem like you’re taking more time initially, it will save a lot of time in the future.

Design vetting

Have your designs vetted by developers in the initial stages itself. They have a better knowledge of development feasibility and UI response behavior.

When you involve them in meetings early itself, you’ll know what can and cannot be implemented on your designs.

This prevents you from going ahead with designs that later have to be removed because of technological constraints.

Copy leads to design.

Start designing layouts only after considering all the required copies. For example, while designing header navigation, start with placing all the copy needed for the context.

Based on the copy, work on the layout and visual elements. It’s fundamentally wrong to be restricted by the layout.

If you start designing the layout without the actual copy, you may have to make design adjustments later, which may not be ideal.

Design for a scalable future

When you’re designing a product, keep in mind the future scalability goals. This ensures that you don’t have to spend time re-architecting later.

For example, while designing an e-commerce site, plan your information architecture after considering the features and functionalities you’d like to have in future designs.

Stick to a process

Decide on a design process for a project and stick to it. Doing this ensures that you don’t keep moving between design stages and waste time.

For example, when you stick to a systematic process, you‘ll know when to move on from the wireframing stage, and your manager or clients won’t compel you to jump between the stages.

These are some of the ways senior designers optimize their time. They consider long term goals and prioritize their time accordingly.