User experience is all the rage. First impressions, consistent quality, matching online with offline, all that good stuff. Every year the same design conferences are full of the same talks. The slides might get shinier each year, but it’s the same guys making the same comparisons. Zunes with iPods, and Zappos with Walmart. The beloved sages take to the stage to preach to their choir. “User Experience is all that matters. Look at Apple. Look at NetFlix. Look at Amazon.”
Thanks guys, we get it.
But do we really?
How do your clients feel?
At the Future of Web Design this year, Andy Budd showed a great graph of the experience of a hotel from a guests perspective. From the air conditioned lobby with fancy chandeliers, through to the mints and personalised cards on your pillow, good hoteliers are masters of experience design.
Andy drew parallels with the experiences offered by web sites & applications. No doubt heads were nodding frantically in the crowds, and frustrated experience designers everywhere shared jokes about how some clients just don’t get the importance of the user experience. I wonder though, how many of them take a critical look at their own agency. Who dares ask “What’s it like to work with me? What is the check-in/check-out process like for my clients?”
It’s a difficult question. It forces you, as a designer, to take responsibility for a lot more than you’re used to, or comfortable with. Your work doesn’t start in a moleskine and end in a browser, just like the iPod experience doesn’t start with with a ultra-white USB cable. It’s a hell of a lot more than that. Just like we tell our clients to focus on more than just the interface, we need to focus on more than just our deliverables.
Designers & developers are all too quick to tell their horror stories about the clients who ring them when their internet is down, or who bought the “SEO handbook” and then destroyed their site with hacks. It’s rare you hear a consultant stand up and say “Here is a project that really didn’t work out, and here is every mistake we made along the way“. That’s a talk I’d love to hear.
Sure, it’s tough. No one likes to admit they slipped up. We need to grow up. No agency is perfect. No designer is perfect. Mistakes are common. Mistakes are good, you learn from them. If you think you run the perfect consultancy, well, you’re in trouble. Not only aren’t you learning from your mistakes, you’re not even aware of them in the first place.
Mistakes
It’s important to take a critical look at your agency from a client perspective and ask what is the experience like? It’s time to stop drooling over iPods, Dysons and Audis and start asking hard questions. What mistakes do you make, or have you made?
Do you over promise to win jobs? Do you treat requirements gathering like a letter to Santa, rathering than a balancing of constraints? Do you smile and nod at every request? “Sure you can have podcasting! Great idea!”.
Do you create wireframes that rely heavily on the use of amazing but also non-existent photography?
Do you conveniently “forget” to include advertising in your wireframes/mock ups, so the client can’t believe how clean and clear everything is, and how great it will look?
Do you design gorgeous sites that you know won’t work with the in-house 3-column fixed-width CMS?
Do you deliver sites that look great on a MacBook Pro, in Safari, 3.1, only?
Do you leave your clients with a site they can’t maintain, held together with browser hacks and sticky tape?
Do you rush in the new project, ignoring a string of unanswered emails from the old, all because deposits are the easiest cheques to cash?
Managing Expectations
Honesty is the key to a good relationship. You have to let someone know what you expect of them, and ask what they expect of you. Do they expect you to answer their every call? Are they aware that they are not your only client? Do you expect them to give quick feedback? Are you expected to win over their colleagues and board of directors too? These things matter.
It’s not convenient to bring them up during the honeymoon period where everyone is too busy back-patting, but these questions need answers. As soon as possible. Sure you can lie, avoid the questions, withhold important information, but do realise this is no way to approach a serious relationship. You will get caught out. You will get dumped. Maybe not during the early phases when it’s all bullet points and boxes. If your halo is made of bullshit, your client will smell it eventually.
Learn from your projects
Next time you’re having a coffee and a passionate whinge about your latest project, think about the chain of events that led to where you are now. Every project you complete teaches you something about your agency, and the client experience you offer. If you’re not listening, you’ll just end up like the bad guy from Scooby Doo, on repeat. “We were all set to finish this project, and we woulda got away with it too, if it wasn’t for those pesky clients“.
13 Comments
Des, thanks. Excellent, I’ll make sure we have halo-smelling sessions ASAP! But don’t let CEOs in on that idea, they’ll start inventing deodorants (or, point being, maybe that’s what we’re all doing…)
Posted by matt at 6:37 am on 8 December, 2008.
Great post.
It has become a vicious circle I find. Over promising and under delivering agencies , over expecting and under realistic clients. I used to work at an agency that would win contracts by writing proposals with so much (true) information that it looked like we were the best but a lot of the work lead to crap (i.e. what you highlight as mistakes).
So I decided to go on the other side of the fence and I now work for a typical client organization. My work is pretty much the same but it delivers much better results I find because there is no agency pretension or cockiness. When there’s an issue, we deal with it completely when it happens. The relationship is a good one.
Posted by marc-a at 2:16 pm on 8 December, 2008.
The funniest thing about managing my clients is, it’s the same process over and over. Each client requires roughly the same thing and each acts roughly the same way. So once I learned how to “handle the bull,” it was really easy dealing with any client that came my way.
Posted by Patrick Algrim at 5:30 pm on 9 December, 2008.
Whose “bull” do you mean Patrick?
Posted by Des Traynor at 12:04 pm on 10 December, 2008.
Very interesting post.
I have recent experience of a client relationship turning unfortunately sour when a project was abandoned half way through development. My initial reaction was to blame the client for not understanding the amount of work I had already put into the project.
On reflection however I understood that I hadn’t made the process clear enough to the client, I had also left time drift on making progress, and hadn’t maintained regular contact to let the client know what was going on.
Given all this it was not particularly surprising that the client found it reasonable to turn around, after I sent them a jQuery enhanced hack-together of the site design, and say “The situation has changed, I probably don’t need a website after all”.
My gut reaction was frustration but analysing what I did wrong on the project helped me learn and move forward. Instead of an sending an annoyed email I contacted the client and let them know exactly where I felt I had let them down.
Posted by Oisin at 2:41 am on 13 December, 2008.
Great post, it’s right on. For me, I’ve found a huge part of the process is figuring out what clients you work well with. I don’t mean that as a cop-out or an excuse to not deal with hard situations. We all have difficult clients from time to time, but I do my best not to enter into those situations.
When reviewing potential clients I intentionally look for ones that are realistic about their project and what it will take. This makes it so much easier and natural to be clear and honest with them from the start. I don’t have to feel pressured into promising an unrealistic wishlist of features if they trust my judgement about what can and can’t be achieved in a project.
Posted by Grant at 6:02 pm on 13 December, 2008.
Interesting post. helpful indeed. but speaking of experience, do you find this font difficult to read? I couldn’t get through the article because of the wide leading. Others in the room agreed. just some feedback to consider.
but again, the article speaks many truths.
Posted by Jamie at 8:14 pm on 18 December, 2008.
@Des
I think you may have mis-interpreted that. I am only saying this because your response doesn’t make up a sensible question based on what I said. “Handle the bull” in terms of being able to take on and understand the actions of something very difficult. Bull as in actual cow, not “bull shit.” — Once you learn how to understand and deal with the hardest client, they all become very easy to direct.
Posted by Patrick Algrim at 12:48 am on 22 December, 2008.
We do quite a bit of thinking about the wide angle brand experience (like the hotel example). There’s an example for virgin galactic in this vid (about 2/3 in though it’s a good talk throughout)
http://msstudios.vo.llnwd.net/o21/mix08/08_MP4s/C03.mp4
Posted by Colm Brophy at 2:19 pm on 5 January, 2009.
Great article!
In other words - be a great sales person and act with integrity.
Posted by Ben at 4:12 pm on 5 January, 2009.
@Patrick -
Thanks for the clarification - I wasn’t sure what you meant. It all makes sense now
Posted by Des Traynor at 5:55 pm on 7 January, 2009.
An absolutely awesome post! Ongoing introspection is always, from my life experience, a sometimes difficult but eye opening exercise.
Well done!
Posted by Kyle Biley at 4:34 pm on 9 January, 2009.
Comment
Posted by Name at 7:10 pm on 7 February, 2009.
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