Photo by SIMON LEE on Unsplash

I work in a UX Design and Research Agency, which means my typical work week involves working on a few different projects at a time, at a reasonably fast pace.

As expected for any project, we organize the main deadlines in Asana. This serves as an overarching idea for what we need to do.

Then, each task is broken down into its essentials — if you’re lucky, these requirements have been defined or reviewed by a senior designer in order to assess that there are no extraneous items, or that you won’t have to backtrack missing items. Furthermore, having these requirements verified by clients or UX research is gold. These are the projects you love to do. That you live to do.

Not everyone gets this luxury, but the importance of a to-do list is all the same.

It falls on the individual designer to break down items, from there, in order to ensure that you miss nothing.

Why the To-Do List?

The evil of humanity is not in malice but in ignorance.

Let’s say you miss one small thing. One component. As you pass your work on to the next person, they do their work and pass it on to the next. Starting from UX Designer to Visual Designer, and to Developer … your work will change lots of hands.

What if no one catches that mistake? What if the client catches that mistake? What if your boss catches that mistake? Then, at every level, this item has to be fixed …

The UX designer first has to fix the component …

Then the Visual Designer has to re-design it …

And then the developer has to fix the code …

How long is that going to take to fix? A few days? A week? A month? This is more time than originally slated. These tiny things matter.

Before you know it, the tiny mistakes build up … and can end up with you being fired.

We have to nip the problem in the bud and save your skin before you get too deep. I know I had to.