Design not "Premium" enough
Sr. Product Designer at a fast-growing e-commerce company here. Would love to hear some thoughts, advice and guidance on this matter.
The last few months I'm struggling with the feedback from my lead and head of product regarding my design not being "premium" or "experience-led" enough.
To give some context: I'm one of the two product designers at my company and work a lot with product managers and leadership stakeholders. We have around 35 engineers and work with Shape Up, 6 week cycles. Every cycle its around two or three bets we work on, varying from creating new "branded" headers to full flows or big new features. We have a brand book, which is limited to a font, logo, colors and a shape. We do not have a head of design or brand and creative direction is mainly focussed on video.
When I started here as the solo designer I've built a full UI Kit based on our brand. Now we are working together with development to align this with development and align our tokens.
The feedback comes mainly from not exploring many "crazy" ideas and too much thinking in consistency, scalability and achievability. Expected by head of product is to always create a couple of super crazy ideas, even if they can not be built within the time. I do explore and show multiple versions with explanation coming from data, user interviews, or prototypes with animations. During meetings I explain reasons for scalability, consistency and keep engineering in mind. But the feedback is always: "Not premium enough, it should move more and feel more branded"
How can I navigate this situation? How can I combine this experience-led premium mindset without losing eye on consistency and scalability?
Happy to share more insights.