An article from Smashing Magazine struck such a chord with me and my daily frustrations with certain type of clients. Especially the non-profit organizations, and civic minded ones.
Here is my favorite excerpt from the article:
Whether they have an in-house Web team or use an external agency, many organizations fail to get the most from their Web designers. Web designers are much more than pixel pushers. They have a wealth of knowledge about the Web and how users interact with it. They also understand design techniques, including grid systems, white space, color theory and much more.
It is therefore wasteful to micro-manage by asking them to “make the logo bigger” or to “move that 3 pixels to the left.” By doing so, you are reducing their role to that of a software operator and wasting the wealth of experience they bring.
If you want to get the maximum return on your Web team, present it with problems, not solutions. For example, if you’re targeting your website at teenage girls, and the designer goes for corporate blue, suggest that your audience might not respond well to that color. Do not tell him or her to change it to pink. This way, the designer has the freedom to find a solution that may even be better than your choice. You allow your designer to solve the problem you have presented.
You can read the rest of the article at Smashing Magazine
This entry was written by , posted on February 19, 2009 at 1:36 pm, filed under Blog, Industry, Thoughts. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.