templatedata

If you've ever designed anything for a client you will know all about the difficulty in talking people out of their own design ideas. This is particularly common when designing front end web stuff. It's really difficult to avoid just saying 'no, that's a bad idea' when you KNOW it's a completely haywire idea that just won't work. It can be colours, IA, labels, content. Some people seem to see 'their' websites as an extension of themselves and thus have total control over the design, even though they have hired 'specialists' to do the job. I often wonder why they waste their money...anyway, if you've ever experienced this you might do well to read Derek Powazek's post 'The Art of No'.

Instead of saying 'No' and getting ourselves into a twist, and annoying the client, we should try asking 'Why' and getting the client to think about why they think their idea is better than ours. Sometimes it will be. Sometimes they will realise they have no good reason to run with the idea.

I know my clients don't want to be designers – that's why they hired me. And even though it may seem like they're making design choices for me, they're really just trying to solve a problem using the only language they know. It's my job to deconstruct the request, and that takes more information. If I can get the client to verbalize the problem they're trying to solve, we can come up with a better solution together. I can talk them through the ripple-effects that come from any solution. In the end, my client gains a better understanding of the role of design, the site gets a better solution, and I don't feel like I've been micromanaged to death.

Now, if only it were that easy...