One thing that really drives me nuts is the unfair way that non-designers judge our work. I have talked about why you should set expectations for your clients and question them, however I have not touched on how to judge whether a project is successful or not. This is often a hard thing to do because the client may not actually know what it would take for a project to be successful. Unfortunately clients often think that a project is successful when the end result looks the way that they may have imagined it. Usually this result is not one that will actually have an impact on their business objectives. So how do we find out what will have an impact?
FINDING OUT WHAT WILL MAKE THE PROJECT SUCCESSFUL
In my previous article about setting expectations I said that you should question your clients. In the process of questioning your clients you will undoubtedly find a question that gets to the root of the clients goals that they are hesitant to discuss. These tough questions will always have a profound influence on the success of any project. The reason that these questions are usually avoided is because they usually are about a negative aspect of the company or service or something that has traditionally been a problem for the company. A small change for the better in these areas usually have a profound impact because they are the company’s weakest points.
However, there is a reason that people don’t ask these questions, because it may upset your client. If you are able to explain to your client that by addressing these weak point head on you are able to make the greatest impact, chances are they will eventually see why. This is not to say that you may find clients who find your questions offensive and may even want to cease business with you because of your inquisitive nature. In my opinion these clients are just setting themselves up for failure and in the long run you will eventually take the blame for their unsuccessful projects no matter how good of a job you have done. In this situation I would much rather lose the client than waste both parties time and money.
If you are willing to take risk in order to gain the insight you need, then you should never have a project that does not receive positive results!
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July 24th, 2008 at 2:07 am
Hi,
it was a great read and I do have to agree with you. But from my client perspective what really helps in communication is prototyping
I wrote about making prototypes some time ago and basically this is the very clear way of showing to the client how a site will “feel”.
Prototyping can also greatly improve what you wrote about asking hard questions as while doing this prototypes can illustrate what are your assumptions and prove to be sanity checks along the process.
Greg Wolejko’s latest post: Adding Events in JavaScript
July 24th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
I have to agree with you completely, especially because I’d rather lose a client than go into a project where both parties will never come to an agreement.
July 25th, 2008 at 2:02 am
Managing the client’s expectations is necessary too: if they expect their website/brochure/&c done by Friday, and you can only have it done by, say, Tuesday, it’s important to let them know, and to let them know why it’ll take that long.
As with Liam, I’d much rather lose the client than wage a war that’ll never be won, but prototpying certainly helps, as Greg suggests.
July 28th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
As a web designer, I completely agree with you. I believe that the only way to find out if your design is successful or not is to have a measurable value to give it. If there is no goal, there is nothing to measure. Great thoughts.