Managing Aspirations

Working as a freelance web designer, has enabled me to understand a great deal about all aspects of managing peoples aspirations, particularly the aspirations of clients. Understanding that what they ask for and what they want are not always one and the same. When you sit down and write out a scope or brief, call it what you will, it is critcal to pinpoint the needs of the client. From my experience, i would guesstimate around 30% of project time is spent working back to the requirements of the user, regardless of how the initial statement was scoped.

This is where the delicacy of delegation comes into force, you as the designer, the developer, the project manager see all sides of the process, what was asked, how it was interpreted and what was output. This can then make it harder to recognize that you did not produced what was asked for, when in truth, it may not have been that you did not deliver, but that the client did not articulate themselves as best they could. In this instance you as the designer need to ‘manage their aspirations’(theres that word again!). As this is what makes the difference, between a talented web designer, and a talented fool, to have talent that extends beyond the confides of the browser, to recognize where the design split from the request, but better than this to have been able to pre-empt it when the foundations were being laid down, and through suggestion and imagination guided the client to what they were actually getting at.

This again brings me back to the point i made previsouly, much of the time you client will not be fully switched on to new media solutions, if you can even call web new media these days, but you are. You the web designer have a full library of code and solutions to action your clients desires, nothing is impossible. Im not saying were gonna get it right first time every time, but by working out a process, by thinking about the method in which we deploy our skills, we can make ht entire process a less stressful, more enjoyable, more proactive experience all round!