Comments on: Can clients make good design suggestions?

By: KhandisMum

KhandisMum — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 14:57:00 +0000

Yes, client feedback and guidance should be welcomed, and in most cases accommodated in some way or another. If they tell you something that doesn’t fit with your own understanding then you need to question them more; like Paul suggests, to find out what’s behind it.

If you challenge their request because you don’t agree with it you need to be explicit about why it’s an unsuitable idea… perhaps educating them a bit in the process. For example, telling them it’s not good to have yellow text on a white background because yellow bleeds into white making it difficult to read in some conditions. Are they creating an ambiguity for their colour blind audience with lots of red and green text? Etc, etc.

Present the facts intelligently and they will understand. Paramount though, is the need to do excellent audience analysis when conducting requirements in the early stages of development. Who will be the primary audience? Who will be the secondary audience? If the primary audience is made up of some pre-teen girls then identify this and ask the client what steps they want to take to retain their presence on the site.

My special interest is audience analysis because by trade I’m a technical author. My golden rule will always be, “don’t write too soon”. Whenever I’ve failed at some aspect of my deliverable it’s because I rushed ahead against my better judgment and some fairly important details was overlooked.

By: JayKaushal

JayKaushal — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 15:23:00 +0000

Yes, clients can sure make valuable suggestion and many times when I was just staring at my computer screen while designing a website and waiting for an idea to come, a small input or inspiration from client immediately helped me move ahead and finding a complete solution which was good for both of us. No doubt, constructive suggestion of any kind is always welcome and it helps in enhancing the design. We designers are busy in creating design for the clients while many clients explore lot of sites and provide valuable feedback and suggestions that help in making a great site. It saves my time. And as the suggestions comes from the client there are less revisions.

But, at the same time, once the color theory of a website was purely dictated by my client’s wife though I kept on saying to my client that this is not good. But ultimately my client’s wife won ( it had to be as she was his wife ) and that resulted in a mediocre website which I never put into my portfolio :)

So, constructive inputs, feedback, suggestions from the clients should always be entertained and where client is wrong we must correct them.

By: Paul Peterson

Paul Peterson — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 21:43:00 +0000

Even though I am a designer, I would love being one of your clients!

By: Mark Slocock

Mark Slocock — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:53:00 +0000

Really interesting post, and one that resonates with me. Generally I agree that the client should articulate as clearly as possible what the problem is and allow the designer to think of the solution.

That said we have had clients make good suggestions and when they do I like to think we embrace the idea, who cares where it came from – what matters is that the end result is better. However this is not the norm generally clients to tend to focus on small design tweaks that do not improve the design and end up diluting it.

The default should be “tell us the problem and let us solve it”, but we are open to any suggestions you might have.

By: Best Hosting

Best Hosting — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 05:38:00 +0000

Thanks for the great advice, I thought it is easy to get client but it would be very difficult to maintain them for business purpose.