The developer world has seen a recent upsurge in roles and titles such as Developer Advocate or Developer Evangelist. The vagueness of these titles has prompted questions such as “What does a developer evangelist/advocate do?” and “What in the world is a developer evangelist?” Champions of this advocacy movement have rushed to provide an answer to these burning questions, even going as far as writing The Developer Evangelist Handbook.
Yet on the design side of this spectrum, things have been remarkably quiet. While Design Operations (DesignOps for short) has enjoyed a spot in the limelight for some time now, it’s not a true design counterpart to this developer evangelist movement. Design evangelism remains relatively underexplored and underexplained. So it still begs the question:
What in the world is Design Evangelism?
The title of Design Evangelist might sound like one of those startup-only titles that don’t really describe anything about this role and still leave us wondering what these people actually do. Even for those who might be familiar or have met someone with the title of Developer or Designer Evangelist, it might still be hard to truly understand what someone who calls themselves an evangelist actually does.
To clear up the confusion around Design Evangelism, we’ll start with what evangelism means in tech and work our way up to design.
Demystifying evangelism
Chris Heilmann, writer of the aforementioned Developer Evangelist Handbook, describes the concept of an evangelist as follows:
A developer evangelist is a spokesperson, mediator, and translator between a company and both its technical staff and outside developers.
While Heilmann specifically refers to developer evangelists, we’d argue this definition stretches beyond the confines of developer roles and could apply to any evangelist. What that means is that an evangelist, regardless of their trade, is a spokesperson, mediator, translator, and advocate for their respective division. They champion the cause of their discipline to both the internal stakeholders of a company as well as the outside world.
In both its original religious context and the tech world, evangelism is a human-centric endeavor. It’s about communicating the ideas, practices, and principles of a specific group of people.
Being an evangelist requires a relatively uncommon combination of abilities. It takes the social skills to talk comfortably with stakeholders at every level. Evangelists are usually natural communicators with an almost tangible passion for their craft, and they’re eager to teach and share what they know with anyone who’ll listen.
Communication is only one side of the coin though. Aside from their ability to convey their thoughts and advocate for their area of expertise, evangelists need to be great at what they do. Developer Evangelists need to be great developers. Design Evangelists need to be great designers, both in creating and explaining their designs.
If pressed, I’d articulate “design evangelism” is the passionate advocacy, education, and coordination of people/principles/practices throughout an organization, using various levers and switches (social, political, economic, technological, etc.), while respecting people’s needs and goals. It’s a human-centric thing, naturally. Uday Gajendar, “What is design evangelism?"
Here, Uday Gajendar identified three core principles, a trifecta, if you will, that form the foundation of this concept. To cover the extremely large field that is design, we’ve reworded and expanded these principles into four cornerstones of design evangelism, which describe what a design evangelist actually does:
- Advocate
- Educate
- Collaborate
- Inspire
Advocate
An evangelist is first and foremost a spokesperson for their craft, a cheerleader. In order to do this right, an evangelist needs to love what they do and love what they’re advocating for. It doesn’t matter whether that’s a product, a service, or a craft.
If you don’t love it, don’t evangelize it — Guy Kawasaki, “The Art of Evangelism”
For design, that means being passionate about everything that design touches upon. It means advocating for not just the role of designers in the product development process, but also emphasizing the role of design within the organization. A big part of the job is making sure the organization understands why good design matters.
Advocacy is the part closest to the traditional meaning of evangelism. As advocates for the craft, evangelists zealously promote the purpose of design and the impact it can make. It’s a means to convert those who are skeptical about what designers bring to the table and to get nondesigners to understand how design influences both the process and the outcome.
Advocacy also takes empathy. There will be people who tend to only see the world from their own perspective and are hesitant or even intimidated by anything that appears different. Relentlessly jamming information down that person’s throat is most definitely not the answer. Evangelists need to be able to empathize with or even adopt the other person’s point of view, in order to figure out what it takes to align this view with their own. That’s how they build connections based on mutual understanding.
Educate
Advocating for what designers do and why it matters does not quite cover it. Just because you’re saying the right things, in the right order, to the right person, does not mean they fully grasp and understand the extent of why good design is tremendously important.
Like a teacher, an evangelist needs to be able to help others understand what exactly it means to be a designer, and what design, as a craft, actually entails. Simply preaching loudly to every passerby is not enough. To advocate for design, evangelists have to be able to break the entirety of their discipline down into manageable, easily digestible chunks of information.
This includes teaching developers how to critique a design, or working with stakeholders to break down any artifacts that designers create, like wireframes or mockups. Helping others understand and appreciate the processes, deliverables, and patterns that make up the field of design is a big part of the work.
And this doesn’t just extend to external stakeholders who operate outside of the domain. It is equally important for an evangelist to be able to educate other designers, to be a guide and a mentor to help them evolve, become better designers, and perhaps even grow to become evangelists in their own right.
The path to becoming a […] evangelist can vary from person to person and company to company, but a desire to mentor and help people is a defining part of the role. […] Evangelists don’t necessarily thrive on being the smartest the person in the room, but rather on being the most empathetic and open to questions — Clubhouse Blog, “What in the world is a developer evangelist?”)
The craft, the processes, and a designer’s output are only part of it. Design is as much about the user as it is about the product, so an evangelist needs a solid understanding of what the users of a product or service need. Great evangelists help an organization and its employees understand and empathize with their users.
Collaborate
Evangelism is not a solitary effort. Establishing design as a positive force within the lives of those around you requires lending a hand and actively contributing to the efforts of others. Whether this means facilitating meetings or workshops, taking notes, or organizing and researching tools and resources, evangelists are as much supporters as they are facilitators.
Being an evangelist gives me the ability to do something different. I can do support tickets, blog posts, write docs, go to a meetup and sit down with people to talk about their job — Ricardo Feliciano, Developer Evangelist at CircleCI
A great evangelist is able to take the backseat, let someone else drive the conversation, and only jump in whenever necessary. Great evangelists place the other person’s interests above their own. Offering to help the other person out will help build a connection and open them up to whatever it is you might have to say.
Inspire
Inspiring others and rallying them to your cause matters a great deal in evangelism, and probably more for design evangelists than for other disciplines.
Designers have the ability to paint a picture of the future, whether it’s an industrial designer’s CAD drawing of the newest smartphone or a UI designer’s mockup for the latest innovation in social media.
Ultimately, designers are (likely) not the ones building the final product. While there are some unicorns out there who are both developer and designer, the outcome of the product development process is a combined effort, involving many different stakeholders. Being able to create and visualize what that outcome might look like before it’s actually out there allows designers to rally others around their cause and their ideas.
“Evangelist who cannot give a great demo” is an oxymoron. If you can’t give a great demo of your product or service, you cannot be an evangelist for it. Demoing should be as second nature, even involuntary, like breathing — Guy Kawasaki, “The Art of Evangelism”
Inspiring people mostly comes down to giving a great demo. Creating a visual representation of what will be built and sticking it on the wall like a ’90s boy band poster won’t necessarily get people excited to build a great product. Explaining your thought process, helping others understand how the finalized product would work, and walking them through this vision step by step is more likely to rouse them.
All four cornerstones come down to empowerment: advocating for good design, teaching others what design is and why it matters, collaborating to build on that understanding, and inspiring others to build the future. Design evangelism is about helping the people around you do the best job they can, with less friction along the way.
