You're My Favorite Client

To get design’s full value, you need to hire a professional. You need a designer. Would you trust any other valuable part of your business to someone who wasn’t qualified to do it? Would you let your cousin’s best friend do your accounting because they had a calculator? Or let your neighbor reprogram your fuel injection system because they have thr

Information design identifies the unique templates that make up your site. What’s a template? Great question. For our purposes, a template is a page or screen type. For example, let’s say you run a shopping site. Your most obvious templates are a product page, category page, search results page, and shopping cart. If you run a news site, you probab

When a designer puts something in front of you, especially if it’s technically tricky, evaluate the effect that piece of functionality has on your deadline. If you don’t know whether something is technically tricky, ask. Here’s a secret: they will always say no. But if it’s tricky, they’ll hesitate for a second before saying no. At which point, ask

A well-designed world is a better world. I love knowing that a thoughtful piece of user interface makes someone’s life go a bit easier, whether it’s designing a menu that’s accessible to someone with low vision or watching my seventy-one-year-old father intuitively use an iPad for the first time. Good design has the power to change lives in big and

If you and I were to design a chair together, we’d have to consider some factors from the get-go. Of course, we’d consider the seat’s size, the height from the ground, the angle of the back, the materials, and the fabric. Before we made any of those decisions, we’d ask ourselves about the chair’s goals. Who would be using the chair? What would they

The goal of this phase is that you jump up in your chair and scream, “Yes! That’s it right there. Make it like that!” Be prepared for that moment to take a few iterations, which are normal parts of the process. A designer who nails something right out of the gate isn’t good—they’re lucky. A designer who works with you, listens to your feedback, pay

Look, you can get a website for $500. You can also get a website for $70 million. The former is gonna have less stuff on it than the latter. (Neither will necessarily trump the other. I’ve seen kickass $500 websites. I’ve also seen million-dollar budgets go down in flames.) Knowing how much money you’ve committed to a project helps a designer tailo

When you ask your designer to do something and they ask why, they’re doing their job. The ensuing conversation is invaluable in helping them solve the problem correctly. The two of you can probably come up with a better solution than either of you could have done individually.

Successful design projects need equal participation from the client and the designer. Yet the design process remains a mystery to the people who buy it. Design isn’t sausage. You’ll enjoy it even more if you understand how it’s made.