Putting the cart before the horse
Recently I’ve been faced with having to present design ideas to a client, as part of strategic recommendations, prior to a user-centred design process having begun.
The reason behind this is to create some enthusiasm and gain buy-in for improvements to a website, to meet their strategic business goals. Without showing them some ideas—including examples of the end product from other sites—the feeling is that we wouldn’t get the go ahead to start a proper design process. This isn’t uncommon in the real world of doing business with clients.
However, I am not particularly comfortable with this approach for several reasons. Firstly, from experience I know that clients often see these suggestions and fall in love with them, demanding they go into production. No matter what you come back and say later, you can’t renege these ‘golden’ ideas. We have included in our recommendations that user research be conducted, with the view that these ideas may potentially be disqualified based on what we learn about the needs of the target audience. But it might be too late by then.
Secondly, the ideas being suggested at this point are not in any way based on the needs of the target audience. They are based on the ideas which some consultants think would be good. And we’re talking about fairly complex functionality; discussion tools, comparators, information sifting. (Can we spell ‘featuritis’?) We just don’t know if that’s what this particular audience wants or will use.
Obviously we could be on to a winner with these features, after all we are supposed to design new innovative solutions. Usability testing will probably reveal if the suggested functionality is not going to work. I’d just be happier if we started with some understanding of the audience needs, rather than the client’s business objectives.
I am probably particularly sensitive to this issue. In a former life I worked in technical development and engineering, then later in the world of marketing and graphic design. These are two worlds notorious for creating websites they would use rather than something their audience would use. In order to move away from that mentality I have become a bit of a zealot and tend to get all shirty when someone doesn’t do things right.
That said, the argument for showing our hand, so to speak, is compelling. If we don’t get the design work we can’t do anything at all. Like I said this isn’t new, I’ve seen it many times before but in the past I’ve just bitched and whined and put up with it. I expected more this time round.
So I’m wondering, does anyone have any suggestions for solving this chicken-and-egg? How do you find a balance between giving the client an idea of what could be possible without short-circuiting the user-centred design process? This is surely an important issue for those of us working in this field.
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