“I think you should change the color”
“I asked, and my Mom thinks the site needs to be more ‘Denzel Washington,’ can we do that?”
I happens. Even after several meetings, drafts and mock-ups, a client’s input can turn a beautiful piece of web designer heaven into a nightmare.
That nightmare can leave many feeling disconnected and ready to quit said Paul Boag, a web strategist from Dorset, England. At last week’s South By Southwest Interactive festival he translated all the “what if’s” into language every designer understood.
Boag gave six client-friendly rules for all designers to follow from idea to realization.
1. Ensure the client understands their role in the process
– The client will identify problems and immediately try to find solutions, ie “Change the color to green.”
– Instead of asking “What do you think?” ask “What do you think about the navigation?” Boag said a common problem is that clients will start coming up with solutions for problems they see.
– Don’t be afraid to ask “why”
2. Have strong methodology
– Lay out your process and include them often and early
– As a result, the client feels in control and engaged
3. Educate them about your decisions
– For example: grids, type white space
– Tell them the logic behind the decisions that are intuitive to you
– This gives them amunition when they take the site back to the rest of the team
4. Ask for specific types of feedback
– How will your users react? How does this meet your business objectives?
– This puts them in comfortable territory
5. Avoid saying no
– Say “Sure, we can do that but lets think that through”
6. Have a successful kickoff meeting.
– This is when you will harness your enthusiasm!
Following these six steps, Boag says you’ll be well on your way to creating your wireframes, moodboards, mock-ups and prototypes.
Watch a short interview with Boag
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This reminds me of when my mom hired an interior decorator that was really terrible at her job and she was mixing light greens with gross colored dark greens and reds and it looked like Christmas gone bad. The lady did not ask my mom’s opinion about it before she began painting and buying things and it turned out that she had to redo everything before it looked the way we wanted it. I like the part about educating the client about why you are designing it the way you are designing it. It is important for a non-designer to understand the process and reasoning behind your decisions.
In the case of the interior decorator, she was just bad.
-Jessie Spielvogel
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This is a great list of rules to pay attention to when dealing with clients. Creating a web site can be frustrating, so it would be a good idea to keep yourself calm when dealing with customers who often don’t know exactly what they want.
The most important rule that is on the list in my opinion is number three, “educate [clients] about your decisions.” This is very important because it not only gives the designer an opportunity to display his or her knowledge on the subject and give the client confidence in his or her abilities, it gives the client information that they can use to explain site changes to the rest of the company.
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Though I’ve only designed my own novice webpage, I can imagine the frustrations behind doing it for someone else with their own idea of what it will look like. Setting guidelines for your client to manipulate the webpage sounds like a great way for the web designer to maintain their idea and incorporate the client’s. Specific questions, instead of broad, will give better insight into what exactly the client needs and how you can achieve it.
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I recently had to work with a page layout designer at the University Star. This session would have been very helpful for us. We had a hard time coming to a compromise on several issues with an invitation.
I think it is important for a designer to explain his/her method or ideas to a client, and also to listen to a client. That way, maybe the whole process will be smooth and less of a headache.