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by Diane Lee

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Friday, May 10th

UC Ballroom @ 7:30pm

All Guests = $15.00

We are on Ticket 42 of 250 

This article is about design consultancy. It’s about wrangling that client who uses empty sentences like, “We want a snappy, simple experience,” or, “It should be on brand and should really pop.” It’s about commanding the room and setting a vision before moving on to wireframes and pixels.

While I’ll talk in terms of consultation, these ideas can be applied to the design phase of any new project.

Banned Words

I start every consultation with this list on the whiteboard:

• Clean
• Simple
• Fast
• Snappy
• Some
• Most
• Nice

These words are banned. If anyone in the room says any of these words, it means we’ve lost our focus or forgotten that we’re in the room to solve problems. We stop, reframe the conversation, then move on.

Any whiteboard is a weapon if you hold it right.

Here are three steps I take to ensure that the words above are never uttered in the first place.

1. Set A Vision

The design process can get derailed right at the start by focusing on questions like, “What’s the best thing about our product?” or, “What differentiates our service from the competition?”

Why This Is a Bad Idea

• Real users have families, jobs and tax bills and are quite possibly drunk when they first experience your brand. Put bluntly, people don’t care about your product — yet.
• Real people experience your idea on their terms, not yours.
• Dumb mass marketing doesn’t work anymore; we’ve raised a generation of marketing-proofed humans. (Thanks, Coke.)

Instead, let your audience define the project by explaining their needs to a friend, remembering that your brand is not what you say it is. Your brand is what people tell their friends it is.

“As a ____, I need to ____, so that I can ____.”

Let’s assume we’re selling ACME Dragon-Slayer Swords. Our audience might say:

“As a white knight, I need to slay the dragon, so that I can save the princess.”

Your brand is not what you say it is, but what your audience says it is.

This is useful because it describes our audience’s impetus and why it’s important to them. However, our user is not yet textured, nor specific enough. We can do better.

2. Narrow It Down

Let’s start with some experiential texture:

“As an inexperienced knight, I need to slay my first dragon so that I can prove my worth to the father of the princess.”

Better. We’ve textured our knight, with corresponding depth to his reasoning. Experiment with different textures — such as technical nouns, age, income and geography.

It’s easy to get lost in our idea and forget how it applies to the larger stage, so let’s delve further in time, before and after our idea:

“As an inexperienced knight on my first quest, I need to impress the king, so that I might marry his daughter and live happily ever after.”

In doing this, we’re taking our user from his real-world impetus, through our brand and back into real life again. We’ve realized that the dragon-slaying itself wouldn’t actually help a real knight achieve their goals. Might we consider selling ACME Dragon-Slayer Swords by how impressive they are to kings?

Describe the brand from multiple viewpoints. For example, our princess may find dragon-slaying presumptuous. If we discover that she’s a more interesting audience, then put her center stage instead.

Dragon-slaying princesses are DIY champions.

3. Stick To Your Vision

Once a scope is defined, remaining within its constraints is important. Thinking back to our banned words, let’s look at the scope-destroyers:

• Some
• Most
• Nice

The sentence, “It would be nice if some users could X” is almost as dangerous as, “Most of the time our users will Y.” This kind of thinking frays the edges of a good idea until it’s unrecognizable.

That way madness lies. Remove all but undebatable assumptions:

• Narrow down “some users” until you can say “every user.”
• If the client says “most times,” remove fuzzy options until they can say “all of the time.”
• Don’t waste time on “it would be nice” issues if you can fix a “we absolutely must” problem.

For example, earlier we defined our knight as inexperienced.

If anyone starts talking about experienced knights, we’d ask them to rephrase in terms of our defined audience. If we get sidetracked by knights who don’t want to impress kings, we’d jot that down on a “nice to have” list and forget about it entirely.

In The Real World

Here are some practical examples from real-world projects that I’ve led:

• Clarity.io
  “As a young adult, I want to donate to charity with my Facebook account so that I can share my charitable identity with friends.”
• The Fitzroy Academy of Getting Shit Done
  “I’ve lost faith in university education. I want an intense, condensed way to skill up and be industry-ready so that I can get out into the workforce soon.”
• OurSay
  “Australian citizens need direct access to people in power so that they can have an impact on their political system.”
• The Promo Bay
  “The Pirate Bay needs a way to centralize and sift through artists so that it can decide who to promote on the home page of The Pirate Bay.”

While we’re thinking “real world,” let’s look at the consultation session itself.

Sleight of Hand

When performing, stage magicians use props and well-practiced patter to better engage the audience. As a consultant, the magic lies in your command of design, while some nuanced expression can transform a banal experience into an engaging one.

One tablet makes you bigger, one tablet makes you smaller.

Practically Speaking

• Keep the vision written at the top of the whiteboard at all times. If anyone gets sidetracked, point at it meaningfully until they quiet down.
• If you feel you personally don’t have the authority to command the room, explain the consultative process up front. People sometimes prefer to trust a well-explained process, especially if they’re older or smarter than you.
• If a client uses terms like “drop-down” or “radio button,” ask them to rephrase without using those words. It’s also a good excuse to assert that the consultation is not about pixels and wireframes.
• Build a personal library of real-world metaphors that explain UX situations. For example, a website that logs you back in without asking is a lot like an automatic door. An HTML prototype is like a car without the engine. Physical examples ground people in reality.
• Your whiteboard marker is a conductor’s baton. This lizard-brain reaction harkens back to teachers in grade school. Note on the board something that a person says that you agree with, and people will suddenly speak on your terms just so you write down what they say.
• Once a vision is established, ask every person in the room whether they agree with it. Put a big tick next to it for each person, in turn. It’s now set in stone, and you can use it as the “bad guy” to settle disputes later.
• Pacing is one of the most important parts of consultation. Set time limits, and don’t be afraid to say, “OK, back to the process.” Consider having a clock in the room.
• Use a banned word, then catch yourself and apologize profusely. It proves you are beholden to the same rules as the client.

Always remember to keep your audience’s impetus in mind.

Further Reading And Experience

I’ve straddled the shoulders of two giants in writing this.

Reading

• The “As a ____, I need to ____, so that I can ____” technique is a simplification of a behaviour-driven development tool. See Bryan Helmkamp’s practical example over on SlideShare.
• I highly recommend watching the “Feedback Without Frustration” video and accompanying article, “How to Run a Design Critique,” by Scott Berkun.
• It may be old school, but a solid understanding of “Cognitive Walkthroughs” in Task-Centered User Interface Design is a good reference point for sticking to a vision.
• The “your brand is what your users tell their friends” idea comes from brand tribalism, another ’90s idea recently popularized by Seth Godin. See his TED talk on the subject.

Experience

You needn’t score a top-dollar client to learn how to deliver solid consultation services. We use these same techniques at work for all of our internal projects.

Try starting your next design sans-Photoshop. Instead, run a two-hour consultation with a coworker. Try again later with a really annoying person who hates your designs. Mixed experiences will help you find your own method in the madness.

Charm is a learned skill.

In Conclusion, re. Applicability

This style of consultation isn’t so great for fixing large broken systems. It’s better for new projects, with a small audience. It also works for small, distinct portions of a larger problem.

Extending the vision should happen after launch and testing, once you’ve won everyone’s heart.

Or:

“As the design lead of a new project, I need some consultative tricks to keep my clients in line and to craft a concise vision.”

(al) (ea)

© Will Dayble for Smashing Magazine, 2013.

Every time we begin a web design project, we do research. We research our clients, their customers, the website’s target audience, and the competition.

Throughout our careers, we research new trends, techniques, tools, and other designers. We’re always on the lookout for that one new thing which will make us better at what we do, or will make our jobs easier. We love our craft, so we read articles, analyze raw data, consult with experts, and more. What is life without improvement and progress?

But so often we neglect to research the one tool, the one common factor, present in every project you will ever touch: you. Oh, you figure things out about yourself eventually. You set up your desk just the way you like it. You figure out that you’re better at some aspects of the design process than others. You may even read a self-improvement article or two.

But real self-improvement takes time, and we’re all busy people. We have things to do, and people to see. We have deadlines.

This is about more than self-improvement as a person. Yes, becoming a better person can make you a happier person, and that does have a direct impact on your work, but there’s more than that. Learning about how your own brain works, and why you make the daily choices you make is something that will give you power. Specifically, it will give you the ability to essentially “hack” your own brain in order to improve its performance.

I have compiled a basic list of questions to ask yourself, that may help you to improve the way you design things. Feel free to add any of your own as you see fit.

1. How good am I at introspection?

The idea of introspection can leave a bad taste in some people’s mouths, so I’d like to clear something up first: There are two basic kinds of introspection. First, there’s the bad kind: when all you think about is your own mistakes and past errors in judgement.  

While learning to highlight your own flaws can certainly be beneficial, Bad Introspection^(TM) can lead to depression and the desire to stop thinking altogether. It’s usually unscheduled, that is to say, it hits you when you’ve run out of other things to think about, and uncontrolled, and so it is unproductive. If you’re prone to this, stop it.

Good introspection is an intentional, controlled analysis of your own actions. When you are engaged in good introspection, you are able to acknowledge your mistakes while also taking note of what you’ve done right.

It’s a good idea to get introspective after each and every project, whether it was a marvelous success, or fell through entirely. Think about everything from your interactions with your client, to your wireframes, to your code. Did you do anything you’re particularly proud of? Did you come up with an awesomely simple explanation for a complicated concept? Did you create a code snippet you’d like to use again? Did you do anything you’d specifically like to avoid doing in the future?

2. Are you a “multipotentialite”?

Some people can sit down and sketch layouts, push pixels, and/or write code for 8-16 hours a day and barely break a sweat. If that’s you, then you are awesome! You guys rock so hard. Your boss, if indeed you have one, probably loves you and if you’re ambitious enough, the world is your oyster!

But I myself am nothing like you. Some of us would positively languish in those conditions, and many do. We might seem like flakes, lazy people, and we look like we’re destined to live off of others. The truth is that many of us can work just as hard as everyone else, as long as we’re able to switch it up a little.

Do you have a million different hobbies, or things you’d like to learn about? Does the idea of doing the same job all week, or even all day, drive you to misery? Does your brain just shut down and refuse to be creative any more around mid-day if you’ve been working on the same project since you started?

You might be what some people call a “multipotentialite”. It turns out that there are more than a few of us. No really, go take a look at that site. Even if you’re not one of us, you should at least recognize that we exist.

If you are a multipotentialite, there are ways to increase your ability to concentrate, such as meditation. But if you’re hard-wired to have an intense interest in many things, you should probably learn to accept it. When you learn to work with your brain, instead of against it, being creative gets a lot easier.

3. When do you do your best work?

I am most creative earlier in the day. This is not to say that I am a morning person, just that the first few hours of my work day are when my best ideas come out. For others it might be the afternoon, or the wee hours of the night.

If you have the option, you should schedule your creative work for whichever time of day works best for you. I do this by writing, wireframing, and doing all aesthetic work in the morning hours. In the afternoons, I can code, and do other more repetitive tasks which require less concentration.

Everything on this list might present you with changes which are difficult to make. This one is probably the worst, though, especially if you work in an office. If that’s the case, have a talk with your employers. See if you can persuade them to allow you to work on your own schedule for a week or so to try it out.

3a. When do you need to stop?

As a side note, it’s good to figure out when or if you need to stop working. I don’t mean stopping for the day, I mean stopping for frequent, very short breaks. For me, it’s about every hour. On alternate days, that’s also when I work out. Those few minutes away from the screen give me time to think without the myriad potential distractions. The pressure eases, and the exercise wakes me up.

Earnest Hemingway once said that it’s best to stop writing while you still know what’s going to happen next. In my personal experience, the same is true of design, and this habit of stopping regularly helps me to do that.

Some of you who need to get into “the zone” to make progress might recoil at this idea, and that’s okay. Maybe a short break every hour isn’t for everyone. But please, do consider your body’s need to move every once in a while.

4. Do you have design biases?

The design you are exposed to in your career’s “infancy” tends to shape the way you work. Apple-style minimalism is still a large trend because many designers use Apple’s products, or at least started with them. Fixed-width website layouts are still being made because that’s how we’ve done it since before the Internet.

I’d like to pretend that no one uses tables for layout anymore, but I know for a fact that there are at least one or two table-layout coders still out there.

If you’re a regular reader here, you’re most likely better than that, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have a bias or two. I myself learned to design websites in the minimalist fashion: the fewer elements a page had, the better. It’s always been a bad, bad idea to distract the user with anything extraneous.

But sometimes even minimalism fails us. Justin Hubbard pointed this out here, and when I read it I was forced to confront a narrow way of thinking, and I’d like to think that I’m a better designer for it.

Besides, Andy Rutledge managed to prove that you can take lots of data, and still make it look good: Texas Rangers Proof of Concept.

Challenge yourself. Make a good-looking website that is most decidedly not minimalist, or vice versa. Use colors you normally wouldn’t. Use a layout you might normally dislike. Of course, you should never do any of this for the sake of it. Do it only to achieve your client’s goals.

5. Do you have people-related biases?

Obviously, I’m not talking about racism, sexism, or any other “ism”, here. I’m talking about personality clashes between individuals. No matter how civil, polite, and nonjudgemental you might try to be, certain personality types are almost guaranteed to bug you.

Maybe it’s that guy in the dev department who just won’t say anything with more than one syllable. Maybe it’s that manager who sees himself as a father figure, and won’t stop putting his hand on your shoulder. Maybe it’s happy people.

I don’t mean people who are content with their lives. I mean happy people who cannot rest until everyone around them is wearing euphoric smiles. *shudder*

My personal favorite is the overseer who hired you to do this job based on your qualifications, but insists on telling you how to do it. The problem with these personality clashes is that we begin to develop a bias toward these individuals and anyone else who seems to act like them. This is counter-productive.

Just because you don’t like someone doesn’t mean that they’re wrong in any given situation. This means that if we want to communicate effectively with them, we have to put our emotions on the sidelines, and see things from their point of view.

It’s tough. Oh man, it’s tough. But there’s more than good communication to be had. Once you’ve developed the kind of empathy required to communicate with people you may dislike, you gain a greater understanding of humanity as a whole.

This provides a huge range of benefits, from being better able to visualize how another person might use an interface you’re designing, to being better able to sell and support your product.

6. Can you explain yourself clearly?

When you first learn the jargon of your new profession, it can make you feel like you’ve joined an exclusive club that has its own language. Besides the obvious problems that this can create when communicating with non-designers and/or developers, this can tend to make you think in vague, abstract concepts.

Ask a non-techy friend to listen to you while you explain your work. See if you can clearly and simply articulate your reasons for making specific design choices. Like the last point, this has more benefits than just clear communication. It helps you to think about your own work in simple, clear terms.

If something you did sounds stupid when you say it simply, you may want to rethink your choices.

Where do we go from here?

Asking yourself a few questions is really only the beginning. If you want to understand anything at all about how your own brain works, you have a lot of reading and thinking to do. If you want to use and apply the knowledge you gain to your work, you have a long road ahead.

But it’s worth it. Since I myself started on this journey, I’ve learned how to accomplish a lot more than usual in less time, and with much less stress involved.

In the meantime, why don’t you add any self-enlightening questions of your own below?

What lessons have you learnt about yourself? Are you too self-critical, or not self-critical enough? Let us know in the comments.

Featured image/thumbnail, reflection image via Shutterstock.

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