SXSW Report

Presenter: Sara Summers, User Experience Evangelist for Microsoft

Play is important, particularly in the workplace.  Science (lead by Dr. Stuart Brown at The Institute of Play) has proven that a life without play leads to depression, rigidity, and dissocial activities.  It’s critical, not just to our well being, but for adaptation and idea generation.  It’s proven that play drives us to seek novelty and newness.

Play elicits our best qualities – it inspires empathy, helpfulness, hopefulness, and betters emotions.  It’s crucial to visual thinking and processing.  Dr. Robert Epstein’s “Shifting” suggests a period of individual ideation, followed by group building and generation produces significantly better ideas.

“To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.” -Thomas Edison

It’s a short blog post, but most of this workshop involved hands on play and brainstorming to illustrate the points made.

Presenter, Paul Boag, Headscape,writer of The Website Owners Manual

Pain free for the clients – not for you, but if your client is happy, then you are happy. What do clients want to be happy:

• To understand the process
• Reassurance about decisions
• To feel in control
• To be confident in the end result
• To personally like the design

It’s about collaboration, not confrontation

6 Principles of Collaboration

1. Ensure the client understands their role in the project – if they understand their role, they understand the process and feel in control.  Make it clear to the client that it’s their job to find problems and it’s the designer’s job to find solutions.  The challenge of most situations is that the clients come back with solutions (make the logo bigger), not the problem.  If they offer solutions, ask them what problem they hope it solves.

2. Have a strong methodology.  Show them your process – how everything on your end works.  It gives them confidence in you and your work.

3. Include the client early and often.  It makes them feel in control and more engaged with the project.  If they feel like they’ve shaped the final result, they’re more invested in it.

4. Educated the client about the decisions being made.  They need to understand how things work – color theory, why things are done the way they are, etc.  You’re giving them ammunition to defend the work.

5.  Ask for specific types of feedback from the client.  Don’t ask them what they “think” – be specific.  Ask them if it meets their business objectives or how they feel their customers/audience will respond.  Asking them what they think puts them into an uncomfortable situation because they’re not design people.  Ask them questions relating to their comfort zone – audience, business goals, etc.

6. Avoid saying no.  Always say yes, but help them think through the process and the consequences of the decision they’re making.  It puts them in control, and helps them weigh the decision they’re making.

Real world practice

1. Kickoff meeting - The client discusses goals and ideas, and you should make them feel passionate about it.  Give them the freedom to feel included.  Ask if there are any other stakeholders – let’s get everyone together and get them excited about the process.  Be sure to get everyone in from the beginning to brainstorm the challenge.  Make it clear how the process will work.  Emphasize that it’s collaborative and what you need from them in terms of involvement and decisions as far as when and how that will happen.  Ask them for words to describe what they hope it will turn out like.

2. Inspiration – Provide look and feel of designs you are aware of that you think they’re looking for.  Explain why you think these example designs have a look and feel that meets their objectives.

3. Moodboards – Quick and easy, spend about an hour per board.  Equivalent to multiple comps.  Show them how the approaches could work – typography, images, style, etc.  Do a few versions until you’re pretty close to what they’re looking for, but make sure you differentiate between their personal likes and what is effective for the audience.

4. Wireframes - Quick drawing of what it would look like – nothing developed too far along.  Work together with them – pencil on paper – and design along with them.  Discuss the organization and content.  Give them time to think it over.

5. Design Mockup – Present only to the key contact at this stage.  Others who haven’t been part of this process won’t have the background.  Give the contact the ammunition they need to defend it when they show others – for his agency that means a video with a full description of what they went through to get there along with explanations so that’s what they can use to present it to others.  When they offer changes, ask why – get to the problem, not what they think the solution is.

6. Design Testing - Test the site for both design and usability to make sure it works.

7. Iterations – Should only be minimal because of the process.