One of the points I didn’t make about web design processes in a recent post was the concept known as designing by proxy.
Basically, this process starts when your client starts to dictate design decisions to you based on what s/he likes. Sounds a bit simplistic and I’ll be the first to admit it makes me sound like a prissy primadonna but I do wonder sometimes why clients actually hire a designer at all when what they really seem to want is a site builder.
A designer to me is someone who takes a set of business goals and finds a solution that meets the users goals – i.e. the business has a goal of getting 10% of all sales via their website. Its now my job as a designer to meet those business goals and the way I do that is to meet the needs of the clients customers. If I start to put the clients explicit branding needs first (in other words if I start to do it so to him it ‘looks nice’) then its been my experience that the design suffers and user needs are harder to meet and if users needs are harder to meet then the business goals will be next to impossible to meet.
This isn’t to say that its a designers job to make their clients unhappy but that a designer has a responsibility to his client and an equal (or maybe even greater) responsibility to his clients clients.
Does this mean I know better than my client? Well yes and no. At first, I don’t know my clients clients – in fact its part of my job to get to know these users but once I do know who they are then the design process begins and from that point on then I do know better than my client. Should he question? Of course. Should he dictate? No. Clients that dictate get exactly what they specify – a badly organised site that fails to meet the needs of their users.
The trouble of course, is that clients are decision-makers – they invariably hate having to hand control of even this one aspect of their business over to someone else. I’ve known clients who (after the process was over) have freely admitted they disagreed with design decisions not because they disagreed but mainly to try and let me know ‘whos boss’.
How to get past this has often been a major sticking point for me. I’ve never lost work because of it but I have walked away from jobs when the situation approached lunacy. I can’t believe I’m the only designer this happens to and so I was wondering – what do you do, how do you handle it? Are there good strategies for dealing with this situation?
Left Brain Right Brain 
These sort of people are often worse if they have done some web design by on their own. “oh well that’s easy, look at the site I did”, “why are you doing it like that? everyone else does it like this”.
There are three possible solutions:
1) If the client wants pokadots, you can do pokadots.
2) You can explain why pokadots might not be such a good idea.
3) You can tell them to go off do pokadots them self.
Which route to take really depends on how much you actually need this client and how willing the client is to actually taking on board what it is your saying.
I have a bucket of paint, it does not make me a painter.
Even harder is the situation within a company, where your client is another internal individual/department, often higher up the management pecking order than yourself.
There still seems to be a general lack of respect for the skillset of the web designer; everyone thinks it is something that anyone can do, that all it takes is ‘an eye for a good design’.
As a former graphic designer / current software developer, the hardest part of either job seems to be sales.
Easiest way to make a client happy long & short term seems to be to flatter and lie — convince them that your (good) design actually came from their head.
Some sample meeting openers:
-> “Last week when we spoke, you mentioned (something), and that made me think of (design element here)”
-> “Here’s my interepretation of (some idea) you had last week — what do you think?”
Given enough lag time, most won’t remember what they actually said, so if you’re presenting them with good stuff, their subconscious self-destructive ego impulse will be torn between dictating (bad) design and taking credit for (good) design.
Cheers, —Josh
I like your thinking Josh ;o)
My trouble is exactly as you diagnose it – sales technique. I have none and am pretty blunt as well. Time to start learning diplomacy methinks.