Tales of a Designer

Project Momentum

One of the more interesting things about working on projects is taking advantage of project momentum. Whether this be your own idea, or your on the brink of locking down a new client, having that momentum is exciting, and should always be taken advantage of.

I just recently thought about this because Tridea has just secured another client and the communication between both parties has been stellar. Not only is the client excited to work with us, but we’re excited about the project as well and it seems that both sides are ready to get going on this project. Throughout all of the [pre-contract] communication, everyone is getting ideas, taking notes, and knowing what direction we want to head in at the start of the project to hit the ground running. It’s all exciting.

My point here is that project momentum is very exciting, and sometimes you come up with your best work when you build off of that momentum. It gives so much confidence to the point where it seems that creative block could never happen. If you start to feel that project momentum from an idea or a client project, take advantage of it because in my opinion, it’s one of the best feelings of being a designer.

Wordpress 2.5 Released

Wordpress 2.5 has finally been released to the public for download. I’ve successfully updated to this version and had no issues with plugin compatibility. I look forward to working more with this over the next few weeks and getting used to the new design. The more I use it, the more things I find that I didn’t notice before.

In addition, Wordpress.org has also been redesigned and closely matches the design of the new admin design as well. I like it a lot, and it’s very clean and structured. So for all of you Wordpress people, go download the latest version. Hope you like it!

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.