There are no perfect design outcomes. Real projects rarely end up looking like Dribbble shots. Designers are never satisfied with their work.

没有完美的设计结果。 真正的项目很少能像Dribbble镜头那样结束 。 设计师从不对自己的工作感到满意 。

The perfectionist in me doesn’t want to admit it, but these are truths of digital design. Every design process is a series of compromises. Larger, more important, and meaningful projects often require greater compromises to get them across the line.

我内心的完美主义者不想承认这一点，但是这些都是数字设计的真理。 每个设计过程都是一系列的折衷方案。 更大，更重要，更有意义的项目通常需要做出更大的妥协才能使它们顺利通过。

Compromising doesn’t mean shipping poor work you’re not proud of. It means delivering well-considered work that satisfies the needs of everyone involved.

妥协并不意味着运送您不引以为豪的糟糕工作。 这意味着交付经过周密考虑的工作，可以满足所有参与人员的需求。

Leave your ego at the door, please, and let’s talk about why compromise is the great superpower of design.

请把自我放在门上，让我们谈谈为什么妥协是设计的巨大超能力。

妥协不仅仅是在约束内工作 (Compromise is more than working within constraints)

Design, by definition, means problem-solving within constraints. Those constraints may be technical, budgetary, time-based, user-centered, business-driven, and based on any number of other factors.

按照定义，设计意味着在约束内解决问题。 这些限制可能是技术上的，预算上的，基于时间的，以用户为中心的，以业务为驱动力的，以及基于许多其他因素的。

Working within constraints isn’t a compromise because they were never up for negotiation.

在约束内工作并不是妥协，因为它们永远都不会进行谈判。

Compromise means a trade-off between two competing needs. It means using new information to make course corrections rather than being unwilling or unable to adjust what you thought was best before.

妥协意味着在两个相互竞争的需求之间进行权衡。 这意味着要使用新信息进行路线修正，而不是不愿意或无法调整以前认为最好的东西。

Compromising doesn’t mean shipping poor work you’re not proud of. It means delivering well-considered work that satisfies the needs of everyone involved.

妥协并不意味着运送您不引以为豪的糟糕工作。 这意味着交付经过周密考虑的工作，可以满足所有参与人员的需求。

Each stakeholder in a design project can have their own agenda, and even when each of those agendas is valid, they don’t always align. This situation of misaligned needs is where compromise is valued most.

设计项目中的每个利益相关者都可以有自己的议程，即使这些议程中的每个议程都是有效的，它们也不一定总是一致的。 需求错位的情况是妥协最受重视的地方。

Great designers have the ability to assimilate even seemingly mutually exclusive needs, balance their strengths and weaknesses, and produce an optimal design solution that satisfies all of the project’s requirements as best as possible.

优秀的设计师具有吸收甚至看似相互排斥的需求，平衡其优势和劣势的能力，并能够提供一种最佳的设计解决方案，使其尽可能地满足项目的所有要求。

Every design process requires countless trade-offs, and other project stakeholders rarely have the tools or the perspective to make those decisions. It falls on the designer to find the optimal outcome. Good designers are simply the ones who compromise most cleverly.

每个设计过程都需要无数的权衡， 其他项目利益相关者很少拥有做出这些决策的工具或观点 。 设计师要找到最佳结果。 优秀的设计师只是最聪明地折衷的人。

妥协不是默认 (Compromise is not acquiescence)

Accepting a poor idea without protest isn’t compromise, and it’s terrible design. You do your clients a disservice when you acquiesce. Compromise requires some give and take from both sides; otherwise, it’s a dictatorship.

毫不犹豫地接受一个坏主意并不是妥协， 这是可怕的设计 。 默认情况下，您会使客户蒙受损失。 妥协要求双方都付出一些代价。 否则，这就是专政。

In a landscape where the best design projects are the result of highly collaborative teams, design by dictatorship doesn't work — whether it’s the client, designer, or someone else doing the dictating.

在最佳设计项目是高度协作团队的结果的情况下，独裁设计是行不通的-无论是客户，设计师还是其他人来做决定。

When designers conflate compromise with acquiescence they despise these trade-offs because they think it means their work is somehow diluted. But true compromise feels satisfying, not hollow. When you stand your ground just firmly enough to balance a tricky set of competing constraints, that’s something to be proud of.

当设计师将折衷与默认结合起来时，他们会鄙视这些折衷，因为他们认为这意味着他们的工作被某种程度地淡化了。 但是真正的妥协让人感到满意，而不是空洞。 当您站稳脚跟，足以平衡一系列棘手的竞争约束时，这就是值得骄傲的事情。

常见的妥协情况 (Common compromising situations)

Here’s an example: Last year, I worked on a large website project. Its importance to my client was paramount. Their entire business revolves around the performance of their website. Fluctuations in conversion rate meant messing with millions in annual revenue. There was a lot of pressure to get it right.

举个例子：去年，我从事一个大型网站项目。 它对我的客户的重要性至关重要。 他们的整个业务都围绕着网站的性能。 转化率的波动意味着数百万美元的年收入。 正确处理它的压力很大。

That pressure came from all sides. They had simultaneously gone through a rebrand, and their brand agency had strong ideas about key design elements that had to be included. Their SEO agency had strict guidelines about link structure, content length and placement, and things like “page rank juice flow” that put restrictions on navigation. Their development team had almost unrealistically tight constraints on timeframe and had to work within a specific tech stack.

这种压力来自各方。 他们同时进行了品牌重塑，他们的品牌代理商对必须包含的关键设计元素有很强的想法。 他们的SEO代理商对链接结构，内容长度和位置以及“页面等级果汁流”之类的内容施加了严格的指导，这些内容限制了导航。 他们的开发团队在时间上几乎没有限制，并且必须在特定的技术堆栈中工作。

All of this was in addition to my primary constraints: the needs of the user. And more frequently than I would have liked, those needs didn’t align. What branding wanted could have made for an ill-considered and inconsistent responsive visual system. What SEO wanted could have compromised the ideal user experience we were so driven to create. What engineering needed could have put all of that in jeopardy. And at the end of the day, it would have been our users holding the short straw.

所有这些都是我主要的限制条件之外：用户的需求。 而且，这些需求比我期望的要频繁得多。 品牌想要的东西可能导致考虑不周且不一致的响应式视觉系统。 SEO想要的东西可能会损害我们如此努力创造的理想用户体验。 工程所需的一切可能使所有这些都陷入危险之中。 归根结底，这是我们的用户拿着短稻草。

At times things got a bit heated. Stakeholders didn’t see eye to eye. Misaligned agendas had to be rectified.

有时情况会有点热。 利益相关者并没有看到眼神。 不正确的议程必须纠正。

It didn’t blow up, and ultimately, the project was a big success. But only because of some careful compromises, most of which fell on my shoulders to facilitate. My role was UX and UI design, but fulfilling that task on such a complex and high-stakes project meant being a facilitator of trade-offs more than a creator of innovative ideas.

它并没有爆炸，最终，该项目取得了巨大成功。 但这只是由于一些谨慎的妥协，其中大多数都落在了我的肩上以提供便利。 我的角色是UX和UI设计，但是在如此复杂且高风险的项目中完成该任务意味着要比其他创新想法的创造者更有利于权衡取舍。

Luckily, I had the tools to make that happen.

幸运的是，我拥有实现这一目标的工具。

设计师配备 (Designers are equipped)

Designers are equipped to solve these compromises with aplomb when they are T-shaped (or “specialized generalists”). Or maybe you’re M-shaped or comb-shaped, or you call yourself a deep generalist or a multi-hyphenate.

设计师具备在T形(或“专业通才”)中沉着解决这些妥协的能力。 或者您可能是M形或梳形，或者称自己为深厚的通才或多重连字符。

Combining breadth of understanding with one or more deep areas of expertise gives you the ability to understand and communicate with empathy across disciplines. And it forges the tools needed to find creative compromises where others may not see them.

将广度的理解与一个或多个深层的专业知识相结合，可以让您理解和交流跨学科的能力。 它提供了寻找他人可能看不到的创造性妥协所需的工具。

If you understand business strategy, branding, marketing, writing, front-end coding, and engineering in addition to your primary field of design expertise, you’re perfectly positioned to be the ultimate compromiser.

如果您除了主要的设计专业知识之外，还了解业务战略，品牌，营销，写作，前端编码和工程技术，那么您将完全有能力成为最终的妥协者。

Your breadth helps make connections and insights that a narrow specialist wouldn’t have found, and then you can funnel those insights into the depth of your specialties to create really meaningful design decisions. You make discovering innovative solutions seem easy because you’re seeing connections other people aren’t even looking for.

您的广度有助于建立联系和洞察力，这是狭窄的专家无法找到的，然后您就可以将这些洞察力渗入到专业的深度中，从而创建真正有意义的设计决策。 您发现发现创新的解决方案似乎很容易，因为您看到的是其他人根本不需要的联系。

The design process — whether Double Diamond or something else — forms a structure to help us tease out all the constraints, identify where design compromises need to be made, and then converge on the optimal solution.

无论是Double Diamond还是其他工具 ，设计过程都会形成一个结构，以帮助我们弄清所有限制因素，确定需要在哪里做出设计折衷，然后集中于最佳解决方案。

In this way, UX design is the great unifier. It’s the one discipline with its fingers in all the pies. That puts you in the driver’s seat when the tough compromises have to be made.

这样，UX设计就是伟大的统一体。 这是一门学科，所有馅饼都用手指。 当必须做出艰难的折衷时，这会让您坐到驾驶员的座位上。

It’s why Design Thinking is a thing. Good design processes give us tools to make clever compromises. All areas of business can benefit from that same perspective.

这就是为什么设计思维是一回事。 良好的设计过程为我们提供了做出明智妥协的工具。 所有业务领域都可以从同一角度受益。

不要轻视妥协 (Don’t despise compromise)

If you despise compromise, you may be more of an artist than a designer. There are no outcomes in design that don’t involve compromise because design is problem-solving for people, and people are complicated. Design is a continuous process of compromise.

如果您轻视折衷方案， 那么您可能更像是艺术家而不是设计师 。 设计中没有不涉及折衷的结果，因为设计对人们来说是解决问题的方法，而且人们很复杂。 设计是一个不断折衷的过程。

Design is as much about constraints as ideas. Pretending those constraints don’t exist so you can push your pure vision out into the world is what immature designers do. Embracing those constraints and thriving in the challenge of compromise is what expert designers do.

设计与约束一样重要。 假装不存在这些限制，所以您可以将纯净的愿景推向世界，这就是不成熟的设计师所做的。 拥抱这些约束并在折衷挑战中蓬勃发展是专家设计师所做的。

Bonnie Chen summarized this sentiment perfectly:

Bonnie Chen完美总结了这种观点：

I’ve gotten to the point where I see my responsibility as the designer as a mediator between business strategy, engineering, product, brand, content, [and other] needs. I just happen to facilitate these conversations with mockups and visual artifacts.

我已经意识到我作为设计师的责任，作为业务战略，工程，产品，品牌，内容和其他需求之间的中介。 我只是碰巧通过模型和视觉人工制品来促进这些对话。

When a designer stops seeing themselves as the owner of their vision and instead as the facilitator of a collaborative design process, compromise becomes natural, easy, and entirely necessary.

当设计师不再将自己视为愿景的所有者，而是将其视为协作设计过程的推动者时 ，折衷就变得自然，轻松且完全必要。

Subscribe to get my best articles in your inbox.This story can also be found on solowork.co

订阅 即可在收件箱中获得我最好的文章。 这个故事也可以在solowork.co上找到

Thanks to Scott Berkun, Bonnie Chen, Shaun Whalen, Deuce Cruse, Clarke Hyrne, and others from the Designer’s Guild Facebook group for insightful discussion that helped me clarify these points.

感谢Scott Berkun，Bonnie Chen，Shaun Whalen，Deuce Cruse，Clarke Hyrne和 设计师协会 Facebook小组的 其他 成员进行的深入讨论，帮助我阐明了这些观点。