Topical and Tropical

Rants, Raves, and Other Mindless Babble

Connections

Posted on July 28, 2009 in Daily Life, Design | comment bubble No Comments »

During the past few years of my career, I have become increasingly aware of the customer experience in our shop. What do I mean by that? I mean how clients are treated from the moment they walk in the door to the conclusion of their particular project. Specifically I have been closely examining how I communicate with them and try to form a connection, because in my opinion forming relationships is just as important as knocking out kickass design. Once you show people that you can produce a great product, you have proven yourself creatively. Once you show people that you are a genuinely nice guy to work with, you have proven that you are indeed human and not just a robot that churns out Photoshop masterpieces.

A former colleague once told me that we are just as much social workers and psychologists as we are designers, developers, and project managers, and I agree with him. Lately I have been focusing not on the technical aspects of my position at Notre Dame, but the emotional components of my job, and finding that sweet spot with clients where we can come together. I have been asking myself questions like, “Do I listen intently? Do I respond promptly to their needs and wants? Do I greet them with a smile and respect? Do I make them feel comfortable when they are in our space for meetings? Do I openly take in all of their ideas without interruption?” If I can answer all of those questions with a YES, I consider that a significant step towards making a connection with the client that transcends websites, brochures, and letterhead.

I often like to use the Department of Development as an example that best illustrates what I am saying. When they come to our office looking to get a project completed, they almost always ask for me specifically to do the work because of the working relationship that we have established over the years. There is a mutual respect that exists. I know that they know what they are talking about and they know that I know what I’m talking about, and that a great product will come out of the ideas that are generated. Design meetings with them are often filled with creative energy as concepts and thoughts are tossed around. People are smiling, the occasional joke is cracked, and we almost always walk away from the conference room with clear goals and a feeling of confidence that we are on the right track. I listen to them, they listen to me, and most importantly we talk to each other and not at each other. We put the image of being a marketing communications machine aside and show the humanistic side of our craft.

Moving forward I obviously plan on doing this much more and doing an even closer analysis of my own personal client relationships. After all, at Notre Dame we are suppose to be a family, and families are suppose to have open lines of conversation. So if that means I take 10 minutes out of my day to walk someone through a wireframe over the phone or walk up to a colleagues office to show them a simple technique in Photoshop, then that’s what I’ll do. In the end, we don’t work in a hospital emergency room. People’s lives aren’t at stake if a site doesn’t launch. So why not slow down, start a dialogue, and create a connection?

Wireframe vs. Priority Map

Posted on February 26, 2009 in Design | comment bubble No Comments »

Over the past few months I’ve been asked to do an increasing number of wireframes for sites and in process I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how they should be treated. Usually what the wireframe entails is me reviewing the information architecture and drawing a bunch of rectangles and squares in an Illustrator document. No color is ever used, no fancy typefaces, just boxes on paper to show layout. Which is precisely where I think the conflict arises. When most of our clients see a wireframe document, they assume that things are going to be positioned exactly as is on the wireframe, and I as the designer, instantly becomes limited in how I can treat the content when it comes to execution. Instead of the wireframe informing the design, it starts to dictate the design, which I think is the wrong path to go down.

I’ve had this conversation with colleagues and I’ve started trying to get them to think of wireframes in a different way. Instead of it being a document that shows where content is going to be positioned on the page, I have been proposing that we treat them as more of a “priority map”. For example, in a recent wireframe I did I had the normal stuff at the top (universal links bar, header, main nav), then underneath that I had a large block for mission stories and to the immediate right in a second column I had a news block stacked on top of an events block. The mission stories block took up 75% of the width of the page, which was a decision informed by the information architecture and discussed by the project team as being the most important thing that we wanted to say on the homepage. News and events were secondary items, and thus only received the remaining 25% of the homepage real estate for that particular row of content. Now I look at that and say to myself, “Maybe I don’t want to put news and events to the immediate right of the mission stories block, but I know that I have to give the priority majority to the mission stories block. That’s the most important thing.” So instead of the wireframe dictating design, it’s informing it, and telling me which areas should get more visual emphasis.

Unfortunately it’s a hard sell to tell our clients to not think about wireframes as structured design layouts. They tend to be reactionary people who see something and immediately want to assume, or worse yet, turn into designers. Perhaps I need to take my concept of a priority map one step further and stay out of Illustrator. Perhaps the solution would be to cut out the rectangles and squares individually and then move them around in a very loose and free-flowing manner either with or without the client present. Whatever way I decide to do it, the most important thing is that clients understand that I have been entrusted by them to give them guidance as to how to most effectively display their content on their website.

So move over rectangles and squares and get ready for the scissors.

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