Design Communication

We hire professionals because we can hold them accountable. If you get audited, you better believe you’re taking your accountant with you to the hearing. If the credit card processing system on your site goes down, you want to know that your engineering team is on it. You also want to be able to call them into your office and ask what happened. Whe

A good client knows the difference between personal opinion and goal-driven, informed evaluation.

I realize this may be hard for you to hear, but I honestly don’t care whether you like what I do. (Don’t throw the book across the room yet. Stick with me.) Obviously, if you like something, my job is easier. But what I can’t do under any circumstances

Design isn’t magic and it isn’t art. It’s a craft. Design solves a problem within a set of given constraints. We’ll talk about why those constraints matter. Much as a doctor needs patients to practice their craft, a designer needs clients to practice theirs. Like walking into a doctor’s office, describing what’s wrong, and then having your doctor d

Examples of questions you might ask:Can you tell me more about what your objectives were for [specific aspect or element of the design]?What other options did you consider for [aspect/element]?Why did you choose this approach for [aspect/element]?Were there any influencers or constraints that affected your choices?

Talk about strengthsCritique isn’t just about what’s not working.We sometimes have a tendency to focus on negatives, the things that cause us problems, get in our way, and that we’d like to see changed. We often take the positive for granted. In our project meetings and design discussions it’s often no different. We spend the vast majority of time

This is your chance to open up the dialogue. By asking questions you give yourself more information on which to base your analysis and give stronger, actionable feedback. If done in a noninterrogative way, it shows the designer that you’re genuinely interested in not only his work, but the thinking behind it, which can make discussing it and listen

What elements of the design are related to the objective?Next we identify the aspects and elements of the design that we believe work toward or against the objective. Whether the aspect or element is the result of a conscious choice by the designer doesn’t matter. We are analyzing the effectiveness of the whole design as it’s presented.

Are those elements effective in achieving the objective?Now that we are thinking about specific objectives and the aspects of the design related to them, it’s time to ask whether we think those choices will work to achieve the objective. This is the crux of critical thinking.Why or why not?Finally, we need to think about the result that we think th

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