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Our ZURBevents explore the intersection of product design and business. →
Come to ZURBsoapbox:
ZURBexpo is an exhibition of product design ideas to help you design great products faster. →
Our latest blog post:
I’m one of the newbie designers here at ZURB. It’s an exciting place to be and I’m so grateful to have joined this powerhouse team. But even with all the joy of coming to work everyday, there are still some growing pains every new designer experiences here. That’s because ZURB is a very special place and we do things quite different here. More than anything else, the pains come from getting up to speed on ZURB’s unique approach to design and breaking some of the (bad?) habits we’ve picked up along the way in our careers up til now.
As a new addition to the team, there’s a lot of pressure to make yourself of value and validate being added to ZURB’s awesome team. (Honestly, the pressure is just in our heads, not brought on by the team.) We desperately want to be “worth it,” which means that mistakes are really hard to get over. Even a small mistake can feel like a huge letdown — a failure.
But failure is a really big deal here at ZURB. In fact, we have a special word for it — opportunity. That’s because every half-baked idea and every inept solution is our chance to find out something new about the product we’re working on. We always throw out a ton of ideas to our customers, knowing fully-well that some of them are too out-there and a few are just plain wrong. But there are three good reasons we still do it:
When new designers, such as myself, join ZURB, we use our experience, judgement and best practices to present solutions that we can recommend with confidence. We just want the customer to look at our work and instinctively fall in love with it, without further explanation, of course — after all, it’s all in the layout, right? The trouble comes when the customer starts asking questions and challenging our recommendations.
The truth is that work doesn’t sell itself. A great concept can be easily scrapped by the customer who isn’t going to read your mind about its merits, while a mediocre idea can be a wild success when positioned correctly.
We often work on very complex products, which require sophisticated solutions. And that means our customers expect us to have the answers on all of their hows and whys (and rightly so!). Which is where I found myself recently — stumbling to explain an elaborate interface and defend even the simplest element, all because I didn’t think through the justification ahead of time. Having a clear point of view is valued greatly at ZURB, but learning how to articulate that point of view is as important, if not more.
When most agencies get projects, they hole up in their offices for a few weeks to do research, put together strategies and comp up layouts. Next, they assemble an impressive presentation and have “the big reveal” meeting with a customer. There the customer-agency relationship is simple: customer provides a project, agency provides a solution. And it’s really the only process designers know before joining ZURB.
Things are really different here. We don’t do big reveals. Our process is not mysterious. We’re very transparent about how ideas turn into concepts, which turn into solutions. We present one small idea at a time, which our customers can easily grasp and believe in. We then combine several small ideas, and they magically become solutions that customers feel invested in and fully appreciate. It’s one small “aha moment” after another, that in the end amount to a big “wow factor.”
Trying to present a solution right from the start can actually backfire! Recently, I worked on a project where I tried to bite off too much too fast. I presented too many new ideas in one little neat layout, which just left the customer confused — we could actually hear their eyes glaze over on the phone. But had I showed all those pieces individually, the customer would have been open to them and felt like they were part of the creative process.
What’s more interesting is that, after working with ZURB, customers often adopt these methods of creative exploration and iteration within their organizations. We love hearing that marketing directors are picking up Sharpies and shopping around sketches to their team. That’s actually one of our schemes for world domination.
It’s been an exciting and challenging couple months. I can only imagine how much I have yet to learn!
Say an exciting client comes to you looking for splashy new product concepts, and they want your help. Awesome, it’s the opportunity of a lifetime! Everything starts off on a roll, but then the entire project takes a wrong turn.
The client gets hung up on hopes of "silver bullet" features that would, in a client’s mind, allow a product to spread indefinitely with little-to-no work or expertise on their part. They want to imitate Facebook or Twitter rather than innovate. They don't want to give feedback, feeling like that would be doing your job for you. Forget about pitching a controversial idea, the client won’t want to take the risk of advocating for your idea with corporate. Soon, the opportunity of a lifetime has turned into a nightmare.
How do you get your project back on track? How do you turn the client around to your ideas? Over the years, we’ve found ourselves in this exact situation and have learned a few tricks that gets our work back on track, making sure we end our projects with high fives all around.
Clients all have great expectations. More likely than not, you’ve signed off on those expectations lock, stock, and barrel. But maybe the client starts asking you to do more than you signed up for — an extra page here or there, a little unexpected javascript, some bonus copywriting. So you find yourself falling back on the contract, saying, "no, no … this is what you're paying for." If you’re doing that, then something has already gone wrong.
Don’t rely on the contract as insurance against this situation. You’d be surprised at how many people sign contracts without fully reading what’s in them. To avoid a situation of clashing expectations, we send over what we like to call "homework questions." We ask up front for the client to clarify how the company will implement our work, trying to get a feel for what they expect out of us and what milestones we'll need to achieve.
Once the project is underway, we reiterate upcoming milestones each week to see if both the client and us are still on the same page. But as they say … um, stuff happens, and you might find yourself at odds with the client mid-project over what’s expected of you.
Don’t panic. You can still turn things around by offering different solutions, making tradeoffs, or extending the project. Show that you're willing to work with the client to find a solution, not just quoting the contract and brushing your hands of the situation. If it comes down to it, it might be best to refer the client to another company or a freelancer you trust to do the work that’s outside your comfort zone.
Remember our big client from the beginning of the article who didn’t want to give feedback because they felt they would be doing our job? Well, that’s the exact situation we found ourselves in not too long ago. More often than not, that’s because giving clear feedback and setting goals requires practice, and many clients are new to this process. In those cases, the client leaves it up to you, saying "I’ll know it when I see it." That’s the worst, and can leave designers shooting in the dark unless they can ferret out more detail.
Asking questions gets over this roadblock. But don’t rely on just what they explicitly say, you have to read between the lines. Often clients will toss out solutions to perceived problems, and you’ll have to identify those underlying problems. Think of yourself as an investigative reporter trying to get to the root of an answer. You’ll have to ask why at least five times before you reveal problems that aren’t obvious. It’s a lot like the tactic you’d take when doing a customer interview, where you have to drill deep into a customer's reasoning.
Once you understand those underlying problems, you’ll be able to offer better solutions. As you talk, throw out options and see what resonates with the client.
Of course, being a good listener helps ferret out those underlying problems, but you can find it’s also useful in dealing with an anxious client.
Because these projects can be hugely important to the future of the client’s business, a client can quickly feel anxious if he can’t see how it’ll all come together. If he feels you’re not “getting it” or he's not sure what you’re working on, the client can try to regain control by micromanaging the project.
This is where being a good listener can be handy. Don’t get the wrong idea, you shouldn't just nod your head, saying “uh-huh, right, gotcha.” The client needs to know that you understand what they’re saying. What’s extremely useful is to repeat back the gist of what they've just said, especially if it’s a complex idea. If they offer feedback you agree with, let them know that and explain why it’ll be a win for the user.
Listening helps, but it’s useless unless you take detailed notes. You can’t possibly remember everything that’s said, and missing details can seriously undermine trust, no matter how inconsequential they may seem. And, at the end of every session, let the client know what you’ll be doing next and when it'll be done. Help the client understand how you'll be solving their problems and let them know what to expect.
A project can quickly end up in the weeds when a new decision-maker joins mid-project. In our experience, this is often a VP of Marketing. This isn’t as uncommon as it may seem — often companies hire outside agencies because they’re understaffed or unsure how to position themselves, which also leads to hiring new people. Since this new person wasn’t present for all the early-decision making, he’ll feel pressure to contribute: often by going against what's been done so far or bringing his own people onto the team.
To be honest, we’ve yet to find a surefire way to solve this problem. Nevertheless, getting the new person on board is crucial. Unless they're invested in the success of what we’re doing, they’ll fracture the company and the project can come to a grinding halt! The best advice we can give: keep the new person in the loop, address any concerns they bring up, and help them feel part of the process.
What can really make or break a project is how you handle yourself and present your work when a project gets sidetracked. In the end, no matter what you do, some clients will be happy and others will be unhappy. However, most clients fall somewhere in the middle. Be flexible with your process, and don’t have a knee-jerk reaction to change. By doing so, you’ll be able to get your project moving in the right direction again.
Last week we talked about the importance of getting feedback and how it was applied when we built Verify. We want to go a little more in-depth and show you how we apply a sketch-based response tactic to client feedback.
For most people, feedback isn't the easiest thing to receive, even for clients. Their product is their foundation, and it's never fun to hear about cracks and weak spots in it. But when we think about designing for people, feedback is necessary to seal those areas and make the product stronger. That's why we like to use sketching as the universal tool to help everyone see the problems and opportunities of their product together. It lightens up the feedback process to make it more fun and productive.
Here are three examples of sketch-based responses we use while listening to clients.
"Our new product takes e-books to a whole new level. People can highlight passages, write notes, add resources, and let it sync with select friends. It's the new way to do book clubs and group studying!
Our Response: Opportunity sketches! We can take each feature and provide a series of opportunities from it, as well as develop new ideas that the client may not have thought of.
"We continue to get support emails about adding a feature to upload a custom logo. Problem is, we already implemented it three months ago! Why aren't they finding it?"
Our Response: Sketch out a workflow and see if its current placement feels natural. From there, look for other places within the flow to introduce it.
"I'm liking a lot of opportunities that we've generated, in particular these four for our logged in home. Now all we have to do is fit it all on one page while keeping with some the existing elements."
Our Response: A few variations of the page using low-fi wireframes. This will help the client start to see everything coming together while still staying loose to allow for changes.
Sketching works in a variety of ways, but strategically using it to respond to clients is a great way to keep the dialogue flowing and to let your clients know you're listening. Sure feedback isn't always the icing on the cake, but when done visually with the aid of sketches, it produces a sugar high that gets people excited. And once they're loosened up, the dialogue can flow and great work can emerge.
Anyone who presents their work to others knows that producing something awesome is only half the battle: the rest lies in communicating well with other people to push those ideas forward.
It's easy to think there's some one-size-fits-all solution out there, and if we could just find it we'd solve the challenge of communication permanently. But people are different, with unique viewpoints and motivators, and may respond very differently to the same approach.
We've found a few strategies, though, that help us understand the best approach to take with different clients, making sure we're all on the same page and working toward the same goal.
A client contact may be representing their company, but that company isn't monolithic, and its employees aren't identical cogs. Going into a project, if you can pull up a contact's LinkedIn page, you're already a step ahead: this will tell you how they like to present themselves professionally, explain their background in both work and education, and will often even include their interests.
Knowing this background can help you gauge what level of technical detail you should go into about a project, what elements will be likely to interest (or bore) them, and what aspects they're likely to find most important. Are they new to the company or a ten-year veteran? Is the work you're replacing near and dear to their heart, or are they ready to chuck it out the window? Picking up on these details can help you avoid potential minefields, better understand what factors clients will appreciate the most.
What's more, this offers a psychological benefit, especially when you're communicating over an (often impersonal) phone: if the going gets rough, knowing that that stickler VP of Marketing used to be an artist, or that Product Manager spent eight years in the Coast Guard will help you see them as people, and hopefully understand their viewpoint a little better.
This is just a starting point - don't jump to conclusions or make rash assumptions, but instead try to better understand where your client is coming from.
We communicate with our clients every step of the way through a project, making sure we're on the right track, and that they've bought into the ideas we're proposing. When we walk a client through sketches, or wireframes, or a visual design, it can be tempting to just turn on autopilot and explain away.
But tailoring your explanation to your client and turning a careful ear on their feedback is hugely important. It can make the difference between a ho-hum meeting and high-fives all around.
First, keep their biggest concerns in mind: were they worried about that new user call-to-action? Emphasizing company branding? The wording of a particular link? Make sure you call those concerns out, explain how you addressed them, and why your solution is awesome.
Second, pay careful attention to their responses as you go. If they're excited about a particular feature, by all means, go into more detail about how great it is. If you feel like you're losing them, feel them out and figure out why. Propose solutions on the fly. You don't want to leave a meeting without knowing how to improve the situation, and they don't want to feel like you're not "getting it."
Keeping these points in mind means clients will be much more likely to feel like they're getting what they need and want out of a project.
Careful listening and mild sleuthing can be invaluable, but ultimately, if you need to know something, just ask. We always send our clients a set of "homework questions" up front, with questions about the background of the company, its product, what they're worried about, what goals they have for the project, etc.
Answers to these questions provide both hard facts, as well as insight into the person answering them. Are they detail-oriented or more big picture? How will they be defining a successful outcome to the project? Knowing these answers up front can help keep you focused on the right goals throughout the project, rather than scrambling to catch up at the last minute.
Just as each client is different, each designer has their own ways of communicating with others. What's your strategy?
We may hope that a great design or a lovely piece of code will speak for itself, but in reality, how we interact with the client, articulate our goals, and present our work makes a huge difference in how the client perceives us and the work that we do.
Sure, there are the dream clients who have nothing but praise and love everything we produce, and the occasional bad seed who can't be pleased, but the vast majority of people fall somewhere in the middle: whether they recommend you to everyone they know, or vow never to hire you again depends on clear communication, positive feedback, and critical listening. As well as great work, of course!
We all need to let off steam now and then, and ClientsFromHell.net gives designers and developers a place to vent about ornery clients - but the site is also rife with examples of inflexibility and missed opportunities on the part of the designers as well. Going the extra mile to turn a frustrated (or frustrating) client around can pay off big time in the long term.
Client: I've spoken to my accountant, and he said you were too expensive, that he could find me another designer for half your price, but I want to work with you. Can we renegotiate?
Designer: How much are you paying your accountant? I'm sure I can find you a cheaper one.
In a perfect world, everyone would know how much work and effort went into creating a great website. But many people don't - that's why they're looking to hire someone like you, after all.
We'd like to think we can just focus on our work, and everything else will follow, but if we're expecting people to pay us and not Discount Bob, we need to be able to clearly articulate the value we provide. If we can't even explain why we're valuable ourselves, how can we expect the client to explain it to their coworkers or accountant?
This exchange is a perfect example of an opportunity. The potential client is clearly on the fence, and even leaves an opening to be convinced by the designer. But instead of taking the opportunity, the designer responds with a snarky comment, and the moment is lost.
Being perennially undervalued can be frustrating, but we're the only ones who can change that perception. Instead of giving up, explain where the chop shops cut corners, and what you can provide that will blow them out of the water. This is not only an opportunity to sell your work, but also showcase your professionalism and interpersonal skills.
Client: "That's the wrong shade of black."
Client: "Can you take the edges in and make it more roundy and less squarey?"
Client: "Can you grow the text a little?"
Designer: "Sure, but I'll have to fertilize it first."
Quite a few of the posts on ClientsFromHell illustrate people using metaphors or leveling criticism that sounds silly to a designer's ear. But we deal in these topics every day, and have an industry-accepted design vocabulary to fall back on.
Clients may not be trained designers or know exactly how they "should" give feedback, but their opinion is vitally important. Listening to not just the words they're using, but the meaning behind them, is crucial.
Yes, technically there is only one "shade" of black. But in practice, how many objects that we might describe as "black" are actually all exactly the same color? Maybe the client would be happier with a very dark gray, or a blue-black. Being deliberately obtuse or even sarcastic for the sake of pedantry doesn't help you or the client.
Think back to the last time you were out of your depth - maybe you took your car to the mechanic, or bought a present for a loved one, or had to do home repairs. Would you like to deal with a condescending salesperson or mechanic? People want to feel like they're in capable hands, but they also want to feel like they're being listened to and treated like a person.
You may not be able to win them all, but we've found that some of our strongest client relationships had rocky beginnings. If you go that extra mile to win a client over, they'll often have the enthusiasm of the newly converted, and sing your praises to friends and colleagues.
More than a year ago we began a comprehensive redesign of TinyPic.com, sister site of Photobucket. As a free image and video uploading and sharing service, we faced a unique task of handling several requirements in our redesign. After several iterations, we ended up very happy with an improved two-column layout for viewing images.
Our layout for TinyPic created a great balance between ads, tools, and the media itself.
Imageshack, longtime competitor of TinyPic, recently redesigned their full view page, too. And it looks just like TinyPic—save for a few "changes" their team made.
Imageshack copies the layout and adds tabs, lots of inappropriate "related" images, and poor negative spacing.
When we designed this page, we went through several different layouts including different columns, ad placements, image/video sizes, and most importantly the calls to action. That's where this design really took off for us. We had three goals in mind for the page when we started:
We nailed each goal with this design. In our experience (with TinyPic and others), we have had a lot of success using med recs on ad-driven services. Even better, the large size of the images and video player, along with the "quick browse" at the bottom of the page, makes sure we're always thinking about your stuff. And with the unique toolbox area in the left column, along with an inline uploader for signed in members, sharing and uploading is our priority at all times.
TinyPic has some great minds behind the scenes, able to constantly improve the service, which is exactly what we've been helping them do. Their related images, the fast servers, unique tools (sharing, links, actions, etc) the cross-browser support, and much more give them the tools to pull this kind of layout off. However, Imageshack isn't able to create a sustainable environment on these pages. Tabs, ads, and random images make it rather dull, literally not what I want to see when looking at images online.
The fact that one of the other heavyweights in the same market as TinyPic has virtually duplicated our design shows that we did something right and—dare I say—revolutionary with our work. Moreover, our client's competitors are now trying to play catch up :).
We recently launched 5MinuteConsult.com for Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a business unit of Wolters Kluwer Health (say that five times quickly). The 5-Minute Clinical Consult is in it's 17th edition and is the medical professionals leading choice for trusted clinical content. It's a honor to work with a company that has a rich history- Lippincott is one of the oldest publishers in the United States and was founded in Philadelphia in 1792.
Social tools like Twitter and Delicious are typically associated with blogs and personal sites, but we decided in our project planning that they would be great for a number of business reasons:
Social tools are a simple way for businesses to get up and running quickly.
TinyPic is an image and video sharing service with a no-frills (registration-free) uploader. We've worked with TinyPic since last year and have had tons of fun working on great projects with their team. The latest feature to launch was themed member profiles. We had the pleasure of designing and coding the six starter themes.
TinyPic first launched registration for their members several months ago and have since had much success in new sign-ups. Long time unregistered users were huge fans of the easy uploading process, simple sharing, and even vanity URLs. Many signed up in short order and were quickly enjoying enhanced features like editing, deletion, and even albums.
Although members loved all those features, they clamored for more. Profile themes was one of the most popular requests. We decided it was an easy to implement feature and pushed forward on it. So far, people seem to love it!
You can check out some of the new themes for yourself by visiting the TinyPic team's pages.
Mike and Tony are in the dark and Alex is busy playing in the grass. If you use TinyPic already and aren't registered, sign up today and get your own themed profile. All your pages—Home, Uploads, Albums, and more—get styled when you set your theme. It's pretty slick!
Stay tuned. We're launching more and more exciting features with these guys in the coming months!
It's not often that your work gets covered on network television, so we were ecstatic when britneyspears.com popped on Entertainment Tonight. It's fun to be able to show family members something everyone gets (never mind that our work probably touches three times as many people every day on the internet!).
We've been catching up on our case studies over the last couple weeks. Here is a case study from a recent client, Britney Spears. Go Britney!
When the world's number one pop princess needed a new website to coincide with the upcoming release of her new single--a mere 8 weeks away--Britney Spears' team turned to ZURB.
Britney's team was emphatic about getting the site completed before the album was released. The ZURB team understood the time constraints, realizing how important it was to be able to visualize the site immediately, focusing everyone's efforts and attention on the quick wins that could be achieved throughout the process. We also understood that what we created should not be 'just another "artist" site'--it needed to reflect the energy and star power that Britney Spears uniquely brings.
With a project as fast and furious as this one, you've got to have someone inside the client's organization who can tell you 'yes' or 'no', if you are going to keep things moving and meet the deadline. So, prior to accepting the project, ZURB made sure that we would have access to the folks who could make decisions--and make them quickly.
Once we confirmed this direct connection to the top, we had several group work sessions with the entire team (including both Britney's management and members of Team ZURB) to share information and ideas on how to create 'something different' for Britney.
By relying on our early surveys and interviews and keeping the entire team focused on achieving a specific set of goals, we were able to quickly drive the decision-making process forward. After delivering multiple designs, we were able to work with Britney's team to refine several potential visual options down to one.
We decided on a cool and simple Britney aesthetic that complimented her personality and stood out among a sea of other artists' web sites. We also employed a set of XHTML/CSS style guides to help manage the site and make future additions and updates easy to seamlessly integrate. ZURB was able to create a user experience that encouraged repeat participation-giving visitors a reason to return again and again.
Britney's team was happy over the results--the site was completed on time, and positioned Britney's brand to stand out within the music world. "I think I've visited the new britneyspears.com more times since its relaunch than I visited it during any of its previous incarnations...I find myself reading the posts, watching the videos, and checking out the photo galleries," said Lauren LeGarde a long time Britney fan. "Good job, Team ZURB! Eveyone who worked on this deserves a bonus!"
Lauren wasn't the only one that took notice--in the first 24 hours, the revamped site received more than 1 million visitors. And the site's message boards were lit up with posts as Britney's fans clamored to connect with her--and each other.
The ZURBlog is where we discuss product design, business and strategy. We use design thinking to challenge businesses and designers to improve the products and services they create.
ZURB is a close-knit team of product designers who help companies design better web sites, services, and online products. We've worked with more than 150 start-ups since 1998.
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