What Clients Don’t Know (and Why It’s Your Fault) by Mike Monteiro – An Event Apart Austin [corrected file] from Jeffrey Zeldman on Vimeo.
This presentation by Mike Monteiro# is worth watching in its entirety. He covers a lot of ground, including the RFP process and how to approach it -- that alone is gold.
Of particular note is the bit at the end where he emphasizes the need for better communication between designer and client:
Your job as a designer and a communication professional is to figure out a way to get your point across.
The relatioship between designer and client often turns into mutual mind reading. With each side hoping the other side will somehow figure out what is in their heads. Hoping they get it without having to be said. Hoping that the right thing just happens. Hoping not to have to have that difficult conversation.
Hope is not a design word. Empathy is.
[...] You are hoping that clients will make you better designers. The way to become better designers is by heping them be good clients.
This is valuable advice for anyone in the service industry -- and we are all in the service industry.
The video description:
When in-house or external clients go out in search of design they often have no idea how to describe what they need, measure what they’re looking for, or evaluate who they might work for and subsequently, the work that’s produced.
As designers it’s our job to help site owners and stakeholders figure these things out and to give them the tools and knowledge they need to evaluate whether what we do is what they need.
Without that insight clients have nothing to go on but gut instinct and subjectivity.
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Valeria is an experienced listener. She designs service and product experiences to help businesses rediscover the value of promises and its effect on relationships and culture. She is also frequent speaker at conferences and companies on a variety of topics. Book her to speak here.