December 12, 2008 from abduzeedo's blog
Design is all about providing the best solution for a problem to a target audience. That's at least the simple way to describe what we do right? Well, some times it can't be harder to make people (and for that I mean clients) understand that and approve a design based in goals and not in a personal opinion based on taste.
Even though we can manage to make the client approve a design, the worst thing is when after they approved they decide that the design is not good anymore and it will be necessary to change a little thing or to add that other thing, and in the end what we got was a Frankenstein design. So what can we do?
Paul Boag, a famous web designer and host of one of the coolest web design podcasts out there, Boagworld, did a great presentation on that subject on the last Future of Web Design Conference and he has some tips for us on how to make clients understand our work.
The keynote was called "Educating Clients to Say Yes", and he talks about how to make clients understand what we do, and some tips on how can we make they approve our work. I highly recommend you to check that out right now.
Also Paul Boag is behind a nice web service called GetSignOff that is exactly about that, getting your design approved. You may present your site designs, manage feedback and also organize multiple versions of your designs in a clear way:
Do you struggle to get design sign off?
You may produce the best website designs ever, but getting sign off is always painful. Presenting designs to distant clients and managing their feedback is challenging.
GetSignOff provides a mechanism for presenting your site designs, managing feedback and organizing multiple versions of a design.
The service is really nice and simple, you create a client and upload your design with the explanation of your approach to it, also you can add notes directly to the design. Then you send to the client a link to a page where he can see that and leave comments. Once you have the client's feedback you can revise the design and send it a new version.
For more information visit the GetSignOff website, they have really good videos showing how it works and give it a try. I think the best way to make clients understand what you do and respect you is showing that you are really professional. You have a very organized system to present and deliver your work, and the most important: you have documentation of the work you have done.
Sneak Peak at GetSignOff.com from Paul Boag on Vimeo.
