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I just started feeling weird vibes happening and not a nice communication. So then the developers start reaching out to me and explaining that he feels being manipulated and asked for less payment and that everything he does is not approved, even though I had a very different experience. And I thought that it's weird that I never get any changes requests or questions or pushbacks or challenges back. It was always like super smooth. ♪
Hi everyone and welcome to a new episode of Honest UX Talks. Since it's Halloween time, today we have a very special edition where we will be talking about our design horror stories. So it should be fun and hopefully entertaining.
valuable because with every horror story or every design process or design challenge that goes wrong, we can learn something and we should learn something. So this is what we will be focusing on in this conversation. But before we jump into sharing our worst
design experiences. I want to take a moment to thank Figura.digital, which is our sponsor for the podcast. Thank you so much for supporting our conversations. For those of you who haven't yet checked out Figura, they are trying to change the way that designers find jobs. So it's a
more than just the job board. They're challenging the traditional job board model. They've created a platform in which both the clients and the talent, they're vetted. So you're in an already curated environment where you are applying to better jobs and you start off with more trust from the client side. So if you're a freelancer or if you're a designer who wants to explore some side gigs or potential new roles, then I definitely want to recommend checking out figureout.digital.
Let's jump into the topic for today. Before we do that, I want to ask Anfisa, our traditional, how was your past week? Hello, everybody. My past week was relatively good. Yeah, it's middle of October, so I'm getting cold here. Still don't feel like it's time for us to get crazy with all the unfinished projects. But we'll see. I think we're about to start panicking soon. So this is last probably two weeks from now.
for me before the end of the year we start preparing for all the Christmas holidays and whatever other holidays if somebody celebrates the Thanksgiving but other than that I'm pretty good I was a little bit working on one of the workshops I started last summer I was like working on the workshop for on and off almost two years but honestly I think I spent on it not more than I don't know like three four weeks in total just very slowly so I'm actually going to conduct the first
workshop already next week. It's going to be a first sort of beta workshop where I'm planning to present sort of design thinking tokens. I don't want to reinvent the wheel. The idea behind this design thinking tokens is that you can implement them in a practical way in your everyday working routine, because we sometimes tend to forget about user. We sometimes tend to start thinking too much about the stakeholders project, the instructions that we have, and then we sort of miss out the most important thing.
what we're here for, focusing on the user. So I kind of prepared how can design thinking be implemented in our daily life in a token level that could help you never forgetting it out. And there will be a couple of exercises that I will be sort of going through during the workshop. And every participant will also get their sort of exercise, a little bit of the personal challenge. And then there will be some feedback after that. So if that's something that you want to check out or test with me, this beta workshop,
you can find the link under this show notes you will be able to find it on my super peer anfisign account not sure how many places will be still there left the workshop is on sunday not sure how many places will be there but check out if there will be still places feel free to join i think it will be fun other than that that's it on my side how about you you wanna how was your last week busy as always i'm always doing a lot of things and projects and design work and everything it's also a
I'm in the middle of sort of an existential crisis where I'm going through a lot of changes and transformations and reshuffling in my personal priorities and professional priorities. So I think it has to do with the end of the year as well. Like this, you know, trigger for what am I going to do next year and what am I doing with my life in general? Is this the right path I'm on? Am I happy? Are my values met and am I operating correctly?
on the basis of the principles I care about. So I'm having this a bit of a, let's say, existential crisis where I'm reanalyzing everything I'm doing. And I think that's also necessary. So I just want to recommend everyone to just push through the pain of introspection and of self-reflection and self-exploration. It's not comfortable. And sometimes letting go and sometimes changing...
the world around you in a way, but it's always worth it in the end. So from my own experience, tracing back to past moments where I kind of repositioned or pivoted or just re-found myself in a new light, those were the most valuable moments in my career. So don't be afraid of change. Don't be afraid of looking reality in the eye and just make the best decisions according to your values, principles and career goals and everything. And I will share more about that in a future episode. Yeah, maybe I'll make an episode just about that at some point.
how to handle introspection and the difficult work of working with yourself. With this very happy intro, not heavy at all, let's move into more heavy stuff, horror stories from our design experience. And I'm going to invite you to start this conversation and maybe share the first story that
pops in your mind when you think about horror design stories. What was your worst experience or the one that you most powerfully remember? I actually have only one really key stories that was pretty recent. It was, I think it was two years ago already. After this year and everything that's happening in Ukraine, my year literally was like
somehow all swooshed. I don't even know what's happening right now. But yeah, I think it was two years ago. And so the story I will talk about really, sorry guys, bear with me because I really don't know how to tell the story quickly. I'll try my best to avoid some details. But there was the story with the freelancing client that I had in the intro part of our podcast. I did mention a couple of times that I'm dealing with a very hard client, but yeah, never,
had a chance to kind of speak about what went down there. And I think this is a great opportunity for us to actually unpack it a bit. So the story goes like that. The situation happened when I was between the jobs during the beginning of coronavirus. So in my previous job at NCR, where I was working for one year, hospitality industry was really hit hard. The company I was working for
just had to let go all the contractors. And I was one of them. Luckily, I was already in the process of applying to another job. So I actually got a job offer from another company. It was not super stressful, but I had two months off where I had like sort of free time and I decided to maybe take one freelance client.
Suddenly there is this freelance client reaching out with a very interesting project. This is close to my topic, very close to what I like to do. The hospitality, the food, the ordering. For me, it was a great challenge. And exactly, I had like two months to work on that. So I decided to agree on this, even though that was the client reaching out from Instagram.
And in Instagram, I usually don't take clients' work. I don't know how, but it's somewhat, even first time I reach out, it just doesn't sound like the right fit often, or maybe not enough professional. I don't even know how to frame it, but it's just, usually I don't take clients from Instagram. In the past, I was taking clients mainly from Dribbble, from YouTube, from network, but not from Instagram. And so suddenly, almost like the first client I got from Instagram was that one. And all started fine. We had a call.
I kind of understood the problem. Like a classic freelancing project. Everything goes well. Our communication is okay. I send the proposal. I'm breaking down the timeline into how we're going to work. I'm preparing sort of notion with all the timeline and the stages and what to expect and which date. We decide on the payments and stuff like that. So all this started automatically.
regularly. Nothing crazy was all normal. So we started working on that and I was basically the first person this client reached out to. So I started working on the project, you know, with the classic sort of design thinking approach when you start evaluating first, coming up with the problem statement, doing some research, talking to different customers of that service, and then start designing,
Slowly, slowly, slowly, I think in the middle of the design project, the client starts talking that we need to find the developers for the project, which of course I agree. And then that's when the situation starts going a little bit astray. So basically this client couldn't find a developer for some reason. I didn't know why. So I started asking my friends around or people who have developers available for work right now.
And I found a really good developer. They talk, the developer sends the proposal. We have all agreed. So everything seemed to be fine. So the developer starts working on the backend and slowly miscommunication starts happening. I didn't really know where it went off, but what happened is that this client started complaining about the developer. Even though the developer was just working on the backend, there was nothing substantial yet to talk about.
The client started sort of not being nice and a little bit mean behind the developer back and start complaining to me, which I was not sure why he was complaining to me since I was not a project manager or I was not necessarily involved in that part.
So, you know, when things... It's very hard to speak in a nice way to not say who has done what. But long story short, I just started feeling like weird vibes happening and not a nice communication. So then the developers start reaching out to me and explaining that he feels being manipulated and ask for
less payment and that everything he does is not approved, even though I had a very different experience. Everything I did was almost instantly approved. And I thought even that it's weird that I never get any changes requests or questions or pushbacks or challenges back. It was always like super...
smooth, everything was very agreeable. And then suddenly I think maybe the client was not happy with the budget on the development and then the client started sort of pushing back. So, all right, that developer didn't work out and then the client asked me to find another developer, which is not my job, but since I'm already committed to
to the project, I start still doing, which was my mistake and my problem. I remember it was like a hot mess because I was searching for developer, client was searching for developer. And I remember the design file at some point I open it and I can see that the design file was shared with like 15 different developers, like very random emails from different companies.
I don't understand what's going on. Who's the developer right now? I enter Slack and I see that every day there is another developer joining and I was never informed about what's happening. So I had to, you know, record videos, make the meetings, explain all over and over and over again to every new developer the project.
From A to Z. That was already a little bit messy. So you have every day new developer joining. Literally just a lot of things happening and you're not following up. You're asking the client what's happening. She's not replying. Then I started talking to different developers. As soon as I give them feedback and we start working together, that developer immediately being replaced again. Okay.
So the developer joins. Again, I give them feedback, spend a lot of time. And my problem is that in the client contract, when I was sending the proposal, I did not add the term that I only work with, let's say, one developer. And this is the amount of, let's say, communication with developer I'm willing to commit.
within this project, which I didn't do. And the client was starting to push me that it's my job to always give the feedback and no matter how many rounds. So that's totally, totally, totally thing that I've learned in the project that I should kind of have the terms very well established, which I had some terms, but not to that extent. I spent a lot of, a lot of time communicating to very different developers that keep changing. I think for three months, I was just talking to different developers, doing nothing else. And I had already by then
full-time job, not so much free time. And then the client asks me to find illustrator for the project. Okay. So now at this point, I'm like, not sure if I should be doing this. I really love that project. It was a great project that I really wanted to put it to my portfolio. So I said, fine, I'll still do that. I'm searching for illustrator. We found a really good illustrator, really professional. We had a great chat with her. Like the developer, if the
that part, I was not very well handling because I thought it's their job to discuss it. With Illustrator, it was more closer to design. I was actually involved in all the stages of the project. And Illustrator did a great job with like kickoff workshop, preparing the mood boards, agreeing on a style and agreeing on the feedback rounds. And literally every day sending looms and videos about the updates and asking if everything goes well, if that's what you're expecting. And the client was agreeing with everything. It was all good.
until suddenly one day a client tells me, we don't like this style. It was like weird. Like I asked my mom or my friend or somebody along those lines and they say they don't like it. So we're not going to go with this illustrations. And that was almost like 75% of the illustration project done.
And I'm saying, well, this is not a good feedback. Let's talk to customers, right? Let's present it to them. Let's test it. And then we will be able to objectively decide if that's the right style for the illustrations. Client is very, very pushy and says, absolutely not. We don't like it. I asked some of my friends. They don't like it. It's bad. It's not what we need. I'm not going to pay for this project.
And for me, that's a huge, huge red flag. When somebody invested 70% of their time into the project and you knew the communication was great and you were part of it, and then suddenly the client doesn't want to pay for it. Okay, so you can see how messy it was already by that point. And I felt honestly very like dismotivated because I involved already a lot of people in this project.
And I felt partly responsible for this messy project. And somehow to me, it didn't happen. But to all those people who were joining the project, it happened. And so it became my nightmare that I'm sort of the PM, even though I've never signed up for that. And I started discussing it with this client that I'm sorry, but this is not how I like to work. I don't agree with these principles. And this is not how my morals kind of work. And if you don't pay to your stakeholders, then I'm sorry, I will be taken off from that project.
And of course, the manipulation started. This is when the client says, I don't care. It's your job. You are obliged to do the reviews and you're obliged to find me stakeholders for the project. And if you don't agree, I will withdraw the money from PayPal. And she was really insistent on sending money through the PayPal, which I don't know if you guys know, but in PayPal, the system works in a way that they always favor the client, not the service provider.
And so very often in a conflict resolution, the service provider wins and it's very, very hard to prove that you provided services, but something went wrong. So if the client was not happy, then you'll probably have to pay back. And so I started receiving those messages that I will have to return all the money I've earned for the project I have already did like, I don't know, three, four months ago. And I kept wasting my energy into communication with supporting that project.
All right, long story short, we had a lot of messages and talks and whatever. It was very frustrating. The whole tone of the voice was very manipulative. And at the end, the client agreed to pay to the illustrator for their work, but on the condition that I will still continue working on that project with communication to the developers that keep changing.
Super messy. Long story short, I think it was like instead of two months, it took me like seven months or even eight months to complete it. They found a developer who was committed. I talked to the developer and handed off everything. It was pretty much okay, but I think the developer was on and off and disappointed.
at the end of the project. I just distanced myself from it a lot. I think the developer was also not super committed to the project, so I didn't know what's happening in there at all. I don't even know if they finished that project, to be very honest. I saw at some point they published it, but they unpublished it. So I'm pretty sure there was much more mess happening afterwards. I just
decided to not answer. I just decided to go off completely. And I think there was a lot of red flags I should have noticed and I should have immediately addressed or I should have not even get involved into. Definitely that's like one of those dreadful and
not pleasant projects I had to go through. And at the end, I learned that maybe freelance is something I don't want to do for a little while right now. At the end of the day, I've learned that I should very clearly stand the borders that
this is my own responsibility and this is not. And if you need somebody to handle the project, you certainly need to hire another responsible person for that. I should be super, super much more clear about the level of communication I will be willing to provide as a deliverable. And then I should try to not involve people that I trust and I believe are great specialists if I see that the communication is not great. And I think that even the fact that in the beginning of the project,
I never get asked for like, as I was presenting design, there was never like a pushback or any critical feedback. That was already a red sign. Why there is not enough feedback. And then suddenly I could see that in the next project with the illustrator, there was never like a pushback or any negative criticism. But then suddenly we didn't like the project. So when you see that communication is just not flowing smoothly, it's a very, very huge sign that
maybe it's not the right project for you. And you should be asking yourself if that's the project you want so badly in your portfolio that you're willing to have this mess in your life that would definitely impact your mental state as well, or you're not. And even though the project is great, let's just not proceed to the next payment next round. And probably this is not a great partnership and we will probably not continue working together, which is totally fine to have. There is, of course, a risk that if the client is very manipulative, you will probably have to send money back through the paypal
On a really important note, please don't use PayPal if you're working with freelance clients that you don't know or don't trust very well yet. Yeah, there was a lot of a lot of mess in that project. I guess I'll stop here. How about your story? Well, before I jump into my story, I just want to quickly unpack some of the thoughts I have around your story. So personally, I don't know why. Maybe because the good side of anxiety is that it makes you extra careful and it
attentive there's this also intuition power that comes with anxiety so I've always had freelance projects and I've had a lot of freelance projects in the past couple of years and I've never had horror stories with freelance clients so I just want to say this so people don't get discouraged that all clients are like this I've had a lot of successful stories where clients were super happy with our collaboration and our work and I know you had that as well I mean I'm not saying that
This is the only experience you've had. I know you're a very successful and appreciated freelancer as well. But just to create a small airspace between the two horror stories, I've had a lot of happy collaborations. But definitely, I think the difference is that I loved your point about taking clients from Instagram. I don't know how that works, but I've learned as well that the better gigs and the better clients, collaboration-educated clients come from...
recommendations or your network and so on. And I've never had clients. I think I've had like one collaboration with a Swiss design agency that came through Instagram, but they were like pretty established design agency in Switzerland. So that went very well. But yeah. And now back to the horror stories.
My horror story isn't about freelancing because luckily I've had like probably seven, eight freelance projects. I think it's less than 10. And because I've carefully navigated which ones I'll take, I was pretty safe on that side. But I've had in my full-time roles, other horror stories that I can share. So now let's talk about a horror story from a full-time design role in a company. So at some point in one of my design roles, I sort of got promoted.
So for me, it felt like a promotion because I was moving from one team to another team that was working on an important product. It was one of the core products. It was this very juicy role where I would lead some of the most important features that the company was developing at that moment in time. And it felt very exciting and it felt like I'm moving up.
and I'm going to gain more influence. I'm going to be able to get more design buy-in and convince people that design is important and just build a design culture space in that product that wasn't there. So I thought that I'm going to change the world for the better. Then reality hit. And it's really hard to change the world for the better when you're the only designer on a team or in an environment.
Of course, I was working with a lot of product managers. I was working with a very opinionated and strong and articulate engineering team. And that was great on one hand because they kept challenging my ideas and challenging everything I came up with. And that forced me to kind of learn very quickly and
and really be able to articulate and have a strong rationale, not just reasons for my design decisions, but very strong reasons for my design decisions. So that was a great learning process. It also was like a constant state of disappointment because I wasn't able to really move the needle towards a better design culture and superior design processes
and everything as much as I tried. So I was doing all this evangelism work, trying to talk with all the stakeholders, show them the value of design, you know, the whole thing that we keep talking about, like small experiments. Here's the process. Here are the pain points we might address and improve and so on. And it seemed like I was winning, but things didn't really change. I wasn't able to change things. So I guess the horror story is just to get more tangible now.
So I came in this team and I wanted to change the world and make it like this example of good design in the company. And what was horrible for me was that I was like immediately thrown into a project. So I couldn't even be up to speed with understanding the product because I had to make design decisions like from week one. And at that moment, they were implementing a very, very big change in the product, like the whole paradigm of the product.
The whole architecture, the whole logic of the product was being changed significantly. And I was thrown in the middle of that to just do design. And as much as I kept pushing back and articulating that design can't be done in one week, design is not just sprinkling some UI improvements because you don't even know what you're improving if you don't understand the product, obviously, regardless of my
pushback, I wasn't able to fully push back. And so I was, I was drawn into like making screens of a product that I didn't really understand yet very well. So I was like constantly feeling guilty, constantly feeling like I'm failing, but I didn't want to be the bottleneck from the first experience with that team. So I really wanted to like allow them to have the same speed and similar efficiency and not be this slowdown for the entire engineering and...
Yeah, the gatekeeper, right? The roadblocker. And so I was sort of like giving in into the pressure of just doing design, whatever that meant, because I wasn't doing design. I was just maybe suggesting improvements based on best practices and industry standards. But I wasn't really doing design because I didn't even have time to unpack the product and do proper research and everything. So and then there was this very big, big, big change. And I
I kind of was associated with it, even though I was the one who kept saying, wait, let's really think it out. Let's give ourselves more time. Let's do more research. Let's understand. And then it all turned against me. So they were pretty nice in the end. So they were pretty happy because we were able to move.
even though in the beginning they felt, oh my God, this person is going to slow us down. They're going to keep pushing back on everything. We don't have the time she thinks we have and we don't have the resources she wants us to have and everything. The collaboration was good. So we had a good communication in time. I really was able to earn their trust and show them that it's important to create space for collaboration
in-depth work and meaningful work and just think about things and really unpack them but so the collaboration was good that wasn't a horror story but what was horror about it was that I kind of gave in to all the pressure and I was just doing screens and I was just doing things that I didn't agree with and I felt like I'm failing every day and even though they were happy I wasn't happy and
And then when some things weren't right, then it was a design decision. But it really wasn't a design decision, right? So I was constantly feeling guilty and constantly in a state of exhaustion and constantly in a state of lack of clarity. So I was perpetuating this lack of clarity. And then, of course, there was the entire dynamic between the engineering team and product managers and design was kind of like used as a...
trade element between them. So it was really just like very difficult moment in my life because I felt like I know very clearly what I should be doing and I'm not doing that because I feel like I can't. I just can't find the power. I can't find the resources. Those were some very intense months and I was working a lot
because I was the only designer and we had like nine product managers at some point. And every product manager said that my feature is the most important, obviously. So I was working all the time, but it wasn't just that that was like exhausting. It was a constant nagging feeling that I'm not doing things as I should be doing them. And I can't find the power to do things as I should be doing them.
And so constantly giving up or sacrificing or compromising on my values on compromising on what I feel should be done. Yeah. So eventually I was sort of in a burnout because of all that, like huge amount of work, but also the huge amount of like sacrifice, mental sacrifice that I was doing. And then also trying to keep the relationships in a good shape because conflict wouldn't have solved anything. Like me becoming this very difficult stakeholder wouldn't have brought me any win. So I couldn't win at that.
point, I felt like there's no chance for me to win. So I might win later. If I build a good foundation now, if I gained their trust, I could win, like lose this battle, but hopefully win the war. And so that was a calculation I was able to make luckily. And in time, it proved that, of course, I never was able to create a perfect design culture or have the
impact that I was dreaming of. But because we were sort of on very good terms, even in the turbulent environment, but all that was happening before the release and everything. After that, things sort of quieted down and the relationship was still good. And I felt like I failed in a way, but like, at least I didn't fail the networking part, right? The relationship part where we trust each other. And so then we were able to do things better in the next project.
and then even better in the next project. And then there was like a constant stream of improvement where things were never perfect. And I think they're never perfect. But I felt like at least I wasn't like giving up every day feeling hopeless, right? And I lost the feeling of hopelessness. And then I was hopeful again. And so my takeaways here would be that to every horror story, there's a silver lining most of the times. So you just have to see it and maybe frame it.
the challenges as opportunities, which is somewhat of a cliche. It's like something that I tend to roll my eyes when I hear about. I frame every problem as an opportunity, right? But it's still a problem. I mean, there's still pain attached to it. So not everything that's negative is also positive. But I think...
it is. I mean, I think that in a way, if you still have like that direction, if you have clarity, if you're intentional about what you're doing, if you have at least some time to think about where you want to get at, where's the, let's say, finish line. There's never a finish line, of course. No product and no process is ever totally over. You can always improve. But like, if you know where you want to get at and if you know where the team should
move towards, then you have some clarity. And even through all the storms, through all the mess, through all the turbulence, you are able to kind of keep, let's call it a North Star, which is something we use in product design. Keep that North Star in mind and understand that that's where I'm heading. And what do I need to do in the present to get there and then make the best decisions based on where you think you should be? So for me, in the middle of that turbulent promotion, I was able to understand that I have to build solid relationships, not be a
pain in the ass to people, help them achieve their goals and navigate the pressure and everything. And then once things kind of settle down and the storm will quiet down, then we can start working on like a retrospective of everything that happened and what went wrong and where I felt like I compromised and I shouldn't and how things...
could have been much better if we did things in the proper way. So yeah, I think that's my story. And I think it's something that most people relate with because we've all been thrown, especially if we've worked in big companies in complex ecosystems with a lot of players, with a lot of relationships, with a lot of maybe products and teams and everything.
It tends to be like that. It tends to be very messy and there's a lot of pressure and everybody wants to deliver and just show that they're moving ahead. And sometimes design can feel like a bottleneck when in fact, it's just like you're avoiding future costs.
through design. So yeah, so that's it. I feel like it was definitely a very tough place to be in. I don't even know what level you were in, but I believe that if you don't feel like senior and being thrown into it, it's very, very easy to start feeling insecure and not happy with yourself and feeling the blame of yours. But that's not. I think in general, if you think about this project from the outside perspective, it does look like it was a zero-sum game from the beginning and should have been
not even started that project in the first place. But if you did, and again, it's easy to say, I haven't been in your shoes, right? But I didn't even know what I was doing. But I think it was very important to maybe establish that this is not the right way to do things, right? But then if that's the resources we have today, this is all we can do, right? And so everybody's aware about the situation and everybody knows that that's not your fault. You did everything, but still did not meet
certain process expectations, maybe. But you're right. I agree with you. I probably would also be very strong on the partner's communication and side. For me, it's also very important that maybe even if the first project does not go as it should be from the design standpoint, I, as a designer, wouldn't be this bad person in the team
making everybody's life uncomfortable and bringing trouble rather than progress, right? I would also try probably to strive for a partnership and talking and then building and establishing those relationships so that in the next project, you can definitely move the needle. Because if there is no trust in the first place, it's impossible to change anything. And it's much, much harder to recover from that. So I understand you on that. Thank you so much for sharing this story. I think we can wrap up this episode today. Yeah, thank you so much for joining us.
and listening through the stories. If you have any similar stories, let us know in our DMs. It would be very interesting to hear more. And if you want us to record more of those honest conversations, let us know on which topic we should be doing it. And hopefully we will record it in the next episode. Don't forget to send us your suggestions and ratings. And we will see you on the next episode. Bye-bye. Bye, everyone.