Building it right: web design Rule 1.1 (overhead from those who actually do it)

Long title I know. Punchy. 

Last night I attended the Conversation Thursday event, this time focusing on User Experience (UX). The speakers (Hammad Khan of Zabisco, Paul Rourke of PRWD and Adam Gutteridge of Elisa-DBI) and the crowd were a super interesting and friendly bunch. The phrase "bat shit insane" (check out the highly successful Lingscars.com and you'll know what we were talking about) was also used, which you have to appreciate in any presentation!

Amongst the aha moments for me (there was a lot given I'm neither from a UX or web analytics background), was one that really resonated. It's simple: 

Get everyone responsible for the delivery of the site involved. In the beginning. 

Sounds obvious. Is obvious. But so rarely done. In marketing, advertising, people are always moaning about what they were handed by the person above them in the chain. The finished artist creating from a concept design, the designer from the art director, the art director from the client handlers and the client handlers from the client. Remember Chinese whispers?

Same thing in web design - the people doing the build handed optimistic briefs by designers and the designer responding to a potentially non-expert brief from the client. In fact, I am sure I have been guilty of writing some of those!

Enough with moaning! There are so many brilliant people who really do 'get it' along the way. But if we don't connect with them, we miss the goodness we pay them for - their skill in their particular area. 


Hence Rule 1.1: Get everyone responsible for the delivery of the site involved. In the beginning. 

What's Building it right: web design Rule 1.0? Get everyone excited by the brilliant thing  the new site we are creating will achieve by making the vision clear, vivid and shared. In the beginning.

You can see @paulrouke's entertaining presentation here.

the many different faces of brand consultancy

We are currently going through a process of selecting a brand consultancy to work with and we are amazed, scared and excited at the different responses to the brief.

Branding is an inexact art with many different interpretations (there are 4.3m Google image results for branding process) and certainly my brief wasn't perfect. We are focusing on a visual look and feel to move a logo-mark to true brand expression.

From the same brief we received straight to art, perceptual directions, initial strategic thought with no clarification, no questions and some brilliant questions back to our business. Confusion. But it is a useful process for the reflection back upon ourselves, refining and revealing our thinking and aesthetic preferences.

Tips for branding consultancies responding to a similar pitch:

1. Read the material given (sounds simple).

2. Ask more questions! The companies who didn't did not think things through properly and responded slightly off the mark.

3. Use visual stimuli: to help discussion, taking things away from terminology and into hearts

4. Some companies repeated back the reasons why we hired them as original thought. Nice validation but sounded strangely familiar...and patronising.

5. Get passionate - we're excited and we need our partners to be too!

6. Customise. Let the customer and need drive the process, not the other way around. A process by numbers makes a client feel like just another number.

For some other thinking on how to delight potential clients and show them that you 'get it', check out this article in campaign, comments on being memorable, great suggestions on all stages of responses from experienced hands via the IPA who mention the classic - chemistry (note, this is more specifically directed at advertising)

This is by no means a complete list - what has your experience been, from either a client or agency perspective?

Meanwhile - we are excited about heading to the next stage!