I am the ONLY product Designer for a very large media company.
I do everything from Daily site updates and design tasks. To site re-designs for any one of our 8 Owned and operated sites. Of course that also includes Mobile/Desktop responsiveness. So normally double the work per page.
There is little to no conversation about overall project goals or layouts, and nearly all designs are a one off before it goes to production. Followed by months of updates that could have been avoided if we had general conversations or iterations. (currently attempting to wrap work on an 18 month long project).
The only design direction I get are the off chance meetings with the Art Director who is Print focused. As you can expect his understanding of digital let alone proper UI/UX direction is normally very off.
My boss is very keen on testing EVERYTHING to have data. Which is not bad, however these are micro test. Down to Button color and text size/weight for nearly everything.
There is ZERO consideration for overall hierarchy of information and their relation to one another on the page. So widgets have now cluttered our site in a collage of ugly.
I have tried everything to Full Spec Guides with Organized Asset organization to help developers understand proper implementation. To creating a common SVG asset library to help them move away from Sprites as they were currently using when I first got here a little over a year ago.
Including setting up Brand Guidelines for All 9 of our brands. This is something they never considered or implemented.
However, none of this has worked and they have consistently reverted back into an unorganized mess of a work flow. With PMs controlling nearly everything. Often overruling my originally approved designs without my consultation. Which results in me being lost when trying to give proper design UAT feedback.
I would love to introduce Sketch or InVision in the our work flow but with little to no collaboration between me and the developers. Its hard to even jump start this idea.
Overall I'm frustrated and feel like most of my attempts and decisions have little to no affect here. Which of course makes me second guess my decisions.
My boss is not in the best mood with me, and would prefer I learn front end development with the expectation that it would somehow fix the underlying issues.
Just wondering if anyone has been in this position or something similar.
TL:DR - Zero process or understanding of proper digital production knowledge in my workplace. Looking for advice on how to introduce something new that might help.
Great design resource
100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (Voices That Matter)
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