The "Real World" Guide to working with Your Designer or Developer

"Real World" Series

Every now and then it's good to do these types of posts, because sometimes we forget that everyone doesn't do what you do and sometimes we expect a little too much of people. Now the other-side of this equation is I get tired of hearing my self talk so it's simpler to write it out and refer people to it.

This is part one in our "Real World" series where we attempt to give viewers a real world viewpoint on things. Hopefully by alleviating the fluff this series drives home some good information.

First: Define the purpose of  your website or application

This part sounds really easy, but in the wrong hands even simple things can become hard.

Ask yourself these question?

1. Is this a personal site?
2. Is this a business site?
3. Is this an e-commerce site?
4. Is this site for generating leads, interest, branding?

 If this is a Business, e-commerce, or branding site here is your guide.

1. Treat business sites as business, never design a sight around a personality, but rather a brand. Too many times, clients want to design their site around what they like rather than designing the site for a purpose. A business site is not about "you", but rather your product or service, your brand, and your clients. If you have not done the homework to know how to design a business site, choose your design partner wisely and trust them to get the job done. A good design partner will meet with you, gather your ideas, assimilate your thoughts, and translate those thoughts for the purpose of what the site is designed for. 
2. Stay in your lane if you are not a designer or developer, please don't try. One of the worst thing that we have to deal with on projects are clients who have attempted to do their own website before. It's like a amateur athlete feeling like they can go pro and compete. It's puts the designer in a very bad position, especially if the customer wants to use graphic elements that they have designed, generally these elements are crap, and now I'm forced to tell you that. Take your ego out of the process and be objective, otherwise your site will become a giant monument to your inability to control your ego. Even designers and developers suffer from this also, we have to be able to design for purpose, not for the sake of showing off.
3. Websites are "employees"not family members - don't become attached to your websites they are meant for a purpose and must evolve. A properly built site these days should be a modular, content/design should be easily able to moved, switched, changed, or updated. Ask your designer to build your site using a content management system. This will allow the user to change or update information easily. 
4. Assign one point person too many people involved in the design process can lead to convolution. Believe it or not a good designer or app developer also plays the part of psychologists. We deal with many different personalities and have to always walk a line between the customer is always right and the customer is nuts. While it make since that when you hire a professional to do a job you should let them do it, but too many times the contractor is subjected to far too many opinions and contradictions. This is what turns 30 day projects into 6 week projects. Designing a website is like designing a home, and their is a reason why you wouldn't bring your entire family and all your friends onsite to give their opinions on the process. Also asking for too may opinions on the design of a website will not give you the desired result that you are looking for. Design is too subjective, ask them about how the sight functions. If you ask 10 people how they feel about a certain color the ranges of response will be extreme dislike, to extreme like, to whatever. Colors on a website are their to enforce predefined psychological responses to what some colors mean, for example black means luxury. 
5. Be decisive in answering questions - Do you know this person? I ask them a question about an example website and their answer is something like," I don't hate it." For the record, "I don't hate it" is never a sufficient answer to any question. If this is you, you are the most difficult person to work with and here is why? Inconclusive answers is a sign that a personal is a non committal.  Not be able to fully commit leads to clarity issues and and genuinely difficult time overall. One of the problems with non committals is they can tell you what they don't like, but never what they like or what they want. This leaves us constantly guessing, with no real direction. This takes us back to number 1. If you don't know what you want trust the person you hired.

In all projects the client is the X factor in whether the projects goes smoothly or not. Most of us struggle with the question of how much to include clients in the process. The one thing we do know is that once the client is involved it can be awesome experience, as I have become close friends with some of my clients, or it can be a destructive force of nature. Here is what you must know as a client, we will only fight for the purity of the project for so long and after that we will give you what you ask for, even if it's a mess.