Tales of a Designer

Identifying Problems

In a recent blog post by Blue Flavor on Problems, Not Features, Tom Watson talks, in depth, about making sure you (as a designer/developer) don’t get caught up in identifying “cool” features on a project before identifying problems with a clients’ business. I’m sure that at some point we’ve all been guilty of this.

The web community loves new features and new technology. New is exciting. New is fun. New is challenging. And when clients come to you wanting something new, their enthusiasm can be really contagious. via

I have definitely been guilty of this before. A client will contact us looking for a redesign of their site, and upon the first glance of their site I start thinking of ways I would redesign it before identifying what their business problems are. We design to solve problems, and sometimes it’s hard for a client to identify what their business problems are, so they think adding “this feature or that feature” would help them grow their business.

In client discovery meetings, how you’re going to design the site should not be the topic of conversation. That stuff doesn’t matter at that time. What does matter is getting information on their business and see what is working and not working, the problems they are having, who their audience is, etc. In other words, just listen and stay focused. From that information, you should then have your work cut out in knowing what needs to be done (features) to tackle problems.

Getting Your Pitch Down

Knowing how to describe what you do can be fairly simple, even to people who don’t really understand the internet. I’ve gotten pretty good at doing that and almost have a little routine down for when the question arises again. But then there is the other side of the fence where having to explain your worth to a person who does understand the internet. In other words, there is a question that I have stumbled across once or twice that I’m trying to get better at nailing…

Why should we choose you to design/develop a website for us?

At first I really hated this hearing this question. I’m sure, in my rookie days, I lost a few [potential] clients because I stuttered way more than normal in a business situation. That doesn’t show confidence at all.

I can’t say that I still hate hearing that question, but it’s something that I’m still working on getting better at. Whenever you listen to successful business people, they have no problem telling you why you should choose them over a competitor. Freelance designers/developers should be the same way because every one of us, at some point, will be asked that question. And in the DIY Era, your pitch means even more now.

Having a solid pitch for your services not only helps prove that you know what you’re talking about, but it also shows confidences in your own self and/or your business. And confidence speaks volumes for yourself and skills, and helps build trust with the person that is seeking your services. Imagine walking into a car dealership inquiring about a certain car, and your salesperson can barely tell you about the specs on a car, or why you should buy it. How comfortable would you feel about buying that car?

I would image that by the time a [potential] client asks the question on why they should choose you, they are already very interested, it’s just up to you not to screw it up.

5 Things Learned Starting a Business

So it’s been about 6 months since I started Tridea with some colleagues, and things have been going great. Since starting Tridea, in addition to having a full time job, things have been quite challenging, and I’ve learned a ton. I’ve done freelance in the past, but not to this extent of actually running a business. It requires a lot of attention and dedication.

Of course there is much more to learn, but here are a few key lessons that I’ve learned thus far.

Time Management

This has been very important to me. Having to work a full time job during the day leaves a very limited amount of time to run a business, so I’ve had to be very efficient with how I spent my time. Working all day, only to come home for more meetings and design work to do can wear on you pretty quickly. You want personal time to relax as well, so in order to balance that time, weekends become a big factor with managing time.

Every person has their own way of managing time, but what I’ve done for the Tridea would be to crank out a few days of solid hard work, little breaks, and get a good chunk of work done. Then I relax for a couple days. This isn’t a sure-fire plan, but it has worked for me. I can’t work all day, then all night for 5 days straight only to have a short weekend to relax, I like to spread my work out a bit more, because working on the weekends doesn’t bother me.

Focus

I can’t lie, sometimes it is extremely hard to stay focused on my work after coming home from an 8-9 hour work day. Somehow I manage to do it easier than other days. To help me focus, I ignore phone calls, non-business emails, turn on music, and just go at it. Once I start paying attention to non-business stuff while trying to work, that is when I lose focus. I’ve also learned not to force creativity. Sometimes you have it, sometimes you don’t, so in the times that you don’t, just let your mind rest. It works wonders.

Choosing Clients

Since we’re in a position where we don’t exactly need every single project for the money, we’re able to pick and choose our clients. It’s awesome. When we meet with [potential] clients, we make sure that we have a good vibe going. If we don’t have a good feeling about it, we turn it down, no matter what the price tag is. A bad client experience is not worth the money. As Cameron Moll says:

I’ve turned down a fair share of projects based solely on the fact that something didn’t feel right at the outset. Fact of the matter is you’ll inevitably be faced with unknown variables in any decision, no matter how well you do your homework.

Communication

This is easily the most important, and the one thing that seems the most overlooked. Our first client was the hardest simply because of communication issues. There were just too many people involved in the project that didn’t need to be. My advice on communication, establish one point-of-contact. Dealing with that one person will help keep projects within the scope, and things will go much more smoothly. You don’t want to be taking direction from 5 different people. It’s not productive, and very frustrating.

In addition to what I mentioned above, keep the client in the loop throughout the whole project. It’s normally not a good thing if the client has to come find you. They should be apart of the whole design and development process. If you have an idea, let them know. It shows that you care about your client. Don’t just communicate with them at the beginning and end of a project.

Contracts are golden

We made the mistake of not having a contract on our first project, which we thought was going to be a quick and easy project. We were wrong. The timeline dragged further than it was supposed, and the project got out of scope. If we would have had a contract, it would have helped tremendously. From now on, no matter how big or small the project is, a contract is required. Outline everything that is entailed for the project within the contract. If the client wants something not in the contract, charge more and redraft the contract. It will save you lots of time and headaches.

As I said, we still have a whole lot to learn about running a business. We will face many more challenges down the road, but the first 6 months have been great, and I’ve obviously learned some useful lessons thus far. I hope to write more after another 6 months.