The Prepared Mind Discussion about designing human interaction.

At the last agency I used to work for, there was a large poster that hung in one of the common areas that read “Next life, I’m coming back as a client!”

We’ve all had our share of experiences with difficult clients — which may or may not be the same thing as bad clients. Bad clients are perhaps the types who don’t pay, pay very late, don’t respect boundaries (i.e. calling your cell phone at 11pm to discuss the most recent comp direction) or are verbally abusive.

Difficult clients can perhaps be good clients if maybe uninformed clients or clients who are new to the design process. The excellent blog A List Apart has published (yet another) fantastic an insightful article entitled “In Defense of Difficult Clients”. In it, author Rob Swan writes:

These clients represent the ultimate test: They require that we explain why frames are bad. Why cross-browser compatibility is a serious issue. Why the use of “click here” is considered inappropriate. Why we now consider the web to be a medium in which vertical scrolling is acceptable. They test our knowledge and they test our patience.

We all know why our methods are best practices, but can we justify them? Because there’s no getting unjustified statements past these clients, and there’s no bamboozling them with buzz phrases and marketing spiel. You have to justify each of your points in plain, simple English, whether it’s a usability concern, a standards issue, or a design choice. (more…)

Mike Rohde, of the Rohdesign Weblog, was good enough to forward a wonderful article to me this morning. The article, The Thin PMS 185 Line, is an excellent critique of the graphic design industry written by Andy Rutledge.

I’ve not read Andy’s writings before but something tells me I will in the future. Andy, apparently not one to waste time, begins the article with a bang in writing:

What follows is a critique of the traditional graphic design community and its various instruments, albeit from someone other than a traditional graphic designer. I don’t write this article in order to bring ridicule upon graphic designers, but rather to shine a light on misguided practices and destructive ideals I want kept out of my own segment of the community – interactive/experience design.

Wow! Nice preamble. Instantly I was intrigued. What “misguided practices”, or better yet, which ones? I, along with some of my podcast guests, have been critical of the design industry at times so I was interested to hear what his observations were. He goes on to write: (more…)

During our time with the ReBrand jury, an interesting concept arose during judging. Niti Bhan, one of the ReBrand judges and design thinker extraordinaire, had made the case for one of the entries that had not made it into our finalists from the day before. It was the feeling of most of the judges that the execution of brand was not up to the level we were looking for.

“Doesn’t strategy count?” Niti countered. Her argument was that while the final execution may have been lacking, the strategy employed by the ReBrand had resulted in more close alignment with the way the target audience shops and increased overall sales. In the end, it was decided that the execution must rise to a certain overall level and while we were dependent on before-and-after sales figures from the contenstants, we had no idea that the increased sales weren’t due to other exterior circumstances such as a competitor going out of business, price-cutting or more favorable shelf space at a major retailer.

But it was a very interesting question. “Does strategy count?” We designers probably have a great deal of experience beginning design projects for which very little direction was provided and few measurable criteria for success were established at the start. And when a sound, well-conceived strategy does exist, more than likely it was hatched and perfected prior to the involvement of the creatives — who are often brought in at the end to “make it pretty”.

And how many times do we designers work up the perfect design brief at the start of a project and then procede to never refer back to it during the course of that project? Should a good strategy be rewarded despite a poor executation? Do we reward a good executation despite a flawed initial strategy?
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We’ll I’m here in Rhode Island for Rebrand 2007! Despite a bit of traffic getting out of NYC, the drive to Providence wasn’t so bad. Upon arriving to our hotel — the beautiful Westin Hotel in downtown Providence — we were met by Rebrand founder Anaezi Modu, who escorted us to the home of RISD President Roger Mandle.

One could only imagine what happened next! Get a bunch of talented, seasoned and opinionated designers under one roof and you’re bound to have some spirited conversations and debates. This gathering did not disappoint!!!

I’ll have to stop writing for now and leave you wanting more, as it’s been a long day and we all have an early morning. Tomorrow I’ll have my camera and promise to capture some interesting nuggets as well as introduce you to the other judges.

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We’re still alive! It’s been a long, long break and to be honest, I have been incredibly busy and perhaps a bit burned out. I missed blogging but can’t say I didn’t enjoy/need a bit of a break.

Typically I get inspired to blog about something by something that happens in my everyday life, whether design-related or not. In this case, I happened to be working on a very extensive client project where my firm’s role was chiefly that of development. Unfortunately the strategy, and specifically the design strategy, was handled by individuals on the client team who didn’t know anything about design strategy.

Part of the problem is that too many clients, and designers for that matter, think of strategy as an area that exists outside of the core competencies of design as opposed to an extension of the design process. And few designers list design strategy as one of their core competencies, this author included.

Seeing the words

Well I’m a visual person and one of my newest and most favorite toys is the Visual Thesaurus, which is an excellent tool! I created a visual map for the word “design” as well as a visual map for the word “strategy” just to see what came up. The results are below.

What’s interesting is that a lot of words that many people would usually associate with the word strategy (but were not on the strategy visual map) were closely associated with the word design. As you can see, many words like “purpose, intention, intent, figure, blueprint, pattern, specify, designate, destine, think, plan, innovation, invention, excogitation, conception, study, conceptualize and conceive”.

Why the disconnect between the denotation for the word design and the connotation? Why is it that, despite the obvious denotational similarities between the words design and strategy, few of us ever put the two words together or think they belong in the same universe?

Food for thought. This is my first entry in months so I can’t get too deep right off the bat!

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I’ve been reading “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” by Malcolm Gladwell. What a fascinating book! It’s not a design book and contrary to the way the title sounds, it’s not a “how-to” book. What it does is help us to understand how/why humans make snap judgements in the blink of an eye. When you think about it, this concept has a lot to do with how we do what we do as designers. It particularly speaks to how clients react to our work as well as to us, personally.

Clients at a Blink
At some point during every project, while selling our work to clients or while our clients’ clients are interacting with our finished product, Blink comes into play. Clients make a snap judgement to the initial design comps we show them based on their own, subconscious feelings/emotions/biases. An award-winning design which we created for one client, a design the client may have loved, could be soundly rejected as crap by another client.

Same work. Polar opposite reactions. Is it really the work the client is reacting to? Maybe not. Maybe they love the work we show them because they love us? More specifically, the love the process we have just subjected them to. Conversely, maybe they hate the work because they hate us or the process leading up to the presentation of work. (more…)

Recently Apple Computer introduced its new iPod, which features the ability to play both audio and video, and in 20 days the company has managed to sell 1 million videos via its iTunes music store.

This is a remarkable feat considering that Apple is only currently offering a very limited offering of music videos and TV. And Apple’s entry into the video arena came as something of a surprise to most, who would have figured that Microsoft, RealPlayer or Sony would have been the most logical players to stake their first meaningful claim into this area. (more…)