Insights earned the hard way

I make a lot of mistakes. It’s part of the process. What I want to talk about here is the way that those mistakes make me a better designer, and a better businessman.

All of these communications have nuanced lessons, and I’m putting some delicate stuff out there in the hopes that others gain from it. Here are some quick anecdotes from recent communications in which I learned some small (and sometimes not so small) but valuable lessons. I hope that they help someone else on their road to becoming a better service provider.

Reminder: Our job is all about communication

Years ago, I came across a quote from a designer in which he basically said, “What we do all boils down to communication.”

If you’ve had a bad time with a client it is often a failure on your end as a service provider and it is very important to learn from it.

Recently, I had a few client interactions which I thought would be valuable to share with the community as an exercise. I’ll start with a great success, continue with a dismal failure, and end with an email exchange in which I make clear the value of working with a professional team.

Client 1

Dealing with poor previous experiences

Projects are done within a larger context. This often means coming in and finishing other people’s work, fixing odd bugs, and updating specs or brands. It also means that a client may have had either positive or negative experiences in the past which bring a certain set of expectations to a new working relationship. Sometimes those expectations are, unfortunately, not very high because of a client’s poor previous experiences.

One of my more recent projects was done with a client whose product is doing very well within their market. What was missing for them was that it needed a UI overhaul pretty badly. This meant setting a visual style, colors, and typography over a wireframe which was a known quantity. In practical terms, this meant following the same general formula which I use for every project. I would have a conversation with the client, do my research, develop a few initial directions, and then have a shared-screen conversation with the client so that we could gain a mutual understanding of how to move forward. Pretty simple stuff, really.

But since this client had had such a bad experiences with working with designers in the past, it meant handling the client very gently and making them a high-priority in my daily task-set. I was very honest and let the client know that making sure he had a positive experience was my main goal and not producing just a UI.

What we developed was a high-quality design which the client was happy with and which they have used in production.

The more important secondary effect was that the client himself had a positive experience which we both valued.

Lesson: Deal with baggage head-on

There is a cascading effect of positivity which is often neglected in the day-to-day race to finish everything. Don’t forget that your clients are people who have had previous experiences before they encountered you and that part of being a service provider is being flexible enough to deal with that baggage.

There is a real longterm benefit for businesses whose clientele are happy. They are repeat customers who bring other clients your way. Your number one way to bring clients to the table is likely via networking. It behooves you to ensure that every client who can give you a referral does. Be nice and do good work. Everything else follows.

Client 2

The end product just wasn’t good enough

Once in a while, a project just doesn’t make it to 100%. Budgets slip, features creep, specs change, and the client gets antsy. It’s their legitimate decision to cancel and move on if they feel that it is in the best interests of their business needs.

I had a frustrating project last year that no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t knock it out of the park. There seemed to always be a gap between the work I did and the expected output. It can be disheartening, but it happens.

After some fifty-odd hours of work, and dozens of iterations, the client called me up and gave me the axe (in the nicest way possible!). He explained that their time was running out and that he didn’t feel like what I was producing was what they were looking for. For a perfectionist like me, this can be a hard pill to swallow and I took it pretty hard — I’m no fan of failure.

I told the client that I understood and that I was sorry to see him go. I was happy to provide my work files and we closed the project amicably.

What I did request from the client was one last, quick call so that we could have an honest discussion about what went well and what did not. It was both awkward and enlightening. The particulars and details of that discussion aren’t really relevant, but what I would like to talk about is the value of jointly coming to an understanding about why the project failed.

Sometimes when you are in the thick of it, it can be hard to see the gaps in communication which add up to a lack of cohesive vision between the parties involved.

Lesson: End all projects with a project summary call

In this particular case, we didn’t have the same vision of what the end-product should be, so it ended up being a poor mish-mash between two visions! Without a call to conclude the project, that key understanding would have never been revealed. It is now something which I can be aware of for the future and try to avoid.

The client appreciated the professional attitude of concluding a project on good-footing and the deeper understanding that final call provided.

Client 3

The Tire-kicker

This morning I got an email from a client which followed a pretty common pattern. If you’ve been working with clients for a while, it is one you’ll be familiar with it.

He shot me a quick two-line mail with an intro, a request for a quote on a pretty complex website, and a link to an example he liked.

Usually, for clients like this I explain that it is difficult to give an estimate without a complete brief and I offer to help them develop one. Sometimes, as in this case, the client responds with a terse request for a “ballpark figure”.

These types of situations can be hard to turn into a real project for two key reasons:

The project is already all about the money. There are already established problems with communication.

I responded with a quote well over what I actually believed the project would cost and simply never heard back from the prospective client.

It’s disheartening when this happens, because my first instinct is to think that I blew it. That project could have been my Mona Lisa, and maybe I just let it slip through my fingers.

But, for me, this is always the right play, as it is always better for me to be available for new work, versus being embroiled in a project which isn’t well-defined. It is a dangerous situation to be in when you’re unsure of the amount of work needed and need to quote off the cuff. One of my problematic areas is getting into projects which take up 100% of my available hours, but do not cover my running costs. It means that I end up either working crazy hours, or that the project drags on beyond what is reasonable. I like to avoid both situations when possible.

The readiness of clients varies greatly. Some come with incredibly detailed briefs including a wireframe set and a brand book. They know what they want and they are generally well informed about cost, timelines, and feature scope. The value that I bring as a designer and developer is a known quantity for them.

For some clients, this is their first rodeo and they aren’t quite sure what I need so that I can do what I do. It is always my pleasure to help these clients through these initial hurdles. It builds longterm trust and a strong relationship which is something that I value. It also builds value for the community at large, as future service providers will benefit from more prepared clientele. It’s really win-win for everyone.

If a client doesn’t have a brief ready, it is quoted as a separate project. Even if we don’t end up working together in the end, we’ve forged a valuable relationship which may bear fruit into the future. We’ve also given the client a key tool which they need to bring their dream into reality.

Lesson: Real design briefs, like contracts, are not optional. They are often an indication of how serious a client is.

Summing up

For me, every new interaction with a client, partner, or random-internet-denizen, is an opportunity to learn something new. It’s important to me to step back after the interaction and take a moment to review. It gives a critical moment for growth, without which we are doomed to failure.

This article is also up on my new public Journal, Let’s Talk Design.