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How to Mitigate Major Project Errors, Pt. 3 of 3

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of this piece.

 

How to Mitigate Major Project Errors, Pt. 2 of 3

Read Part 1 of this piece.

How to Mitigate Major Project Errors, Pt. 1 of 3

Refreshed by your first eight hours of sleep in what feels like a decade, you stroll into your office, only to be stopped cold by the message light blinking on your voicemail.

It's your client, with a three-minute description of how their new shopping cart system—which you'd been slaving over for months, and finally deployed late last night—has been balking while trying to process credit card purchases. For hours. To the tune of many thousands of dollars lost in sales.

How will you resolve this issue, and how are you going to communicate a plan of action to your client?

Where we most often fail in the client management process is when, after all that work, errors still slip through—and we can't formally explain to our clients how we'll resolve them to their benefit.

Depending on the scale of your client's business, an error in project implementation could have a major fiscal impact—not to mention the drag on your long-term customer experience. Errors like the ones I noted above happen more often than we would care to admit. Most web designers understand the value of testing protocols, debugging code, and stabilizing a build in order to deploy a website or web app. But it's how we manage the errors that slip through while testing, printing, or fulfilling your design work that forges project success. Dealing with project errors in a professional manner is what defines the longevity of designer-client relationships.

Here's a quick primer on how to maintain your professionalism and protect the integrity of your client relationships when resolving these kinds of major project errors.

Hello, frog design

 

This July, I'll be making the leap to the Seattle office of frog design—as a senior interaction designer.

I'm very excited to be joining a firm whose work and legacy I've followed through my career. Their recent establishment of the publication Design Mind—as well as their devotion to engaging high-impact pro bono work alongside their always-stunning client projects—are borne out of a sustained commitment to design's pivotal role in industry and culture.

It's been quite a journey to arrive at this destination.

Moving Beyond Words: Tips for Better Group Brainstorms

The following advice sounds easy to put into practice, but it isn't.

If you're participating in a major brainstorm, you need to move beyond conversation as a way of communicating your creative ideas.

Act out your layouts. Make physical prototypes. Role-play different scenarios in character. Challenge the need to provide critique. Leave your rational mind behind and feel free to go random, as long as your launch pad is the creative brief. And always have someone record every idea that's being shared in the room, from start to finish—both in word and in sketch form. Record everything on video if you can't take notes fast enough.

Why is it so hard to foster ideation that extends past the spoken word? Companies like IDEO have been plugging this mindset for eons, but I sit in brainstorm after brainstorm where people fall into ideation patterns. One person has an idea, which they share out loud. Then another person has an idea, which is verbalized in the same manner. There's a slow verbal dance back and forth about those ideas. Sometimes, someone writes that idea down on a whiteboard or notepad. We explore through language the nooks and crannies of what's being communicated through only one medium: spoken words.

This is a real shame, because there is important information not being communicated about your ideas—nuances and options that aren't being communicated, captured, and otherwise emoted.

And that extra information is where the real surprises happen in a brainstorm. The more information you get into the brainstorming group, the more ideas you'll get out as a result. This is just simple math.

The Art of the Luminous Detail

I listen to the nest of baby starlings outside my front window. In the midst of their morning song, I have picked out their attempts to recreate the sounds of car alarms, police sirens, foghorns from boats on Lake Union, cars accelerating, the cry of a toddler, doors shutting, and the calls of robins, crows, flickers, and a wide range of other birds that throng the trees and marshes near our home.

The song of the starling seems like a random melange of clicks, whistles, warbles, and otherwise incongruous chatter. But the starling does speak in a pattern—one that is barely perceptible to the human ear, but possible to decode. Philosophy professor and musician David Rothenberg wrote a lovely book called Why Birds Sing that delves into this very subject:

"Starlings eat everything, and they absorb all manner of peculiar sounds, choosing those that fit their own aesthetic... a full starling song, which takes about a minute to sing, is composed of four distinct kinds of phrases... [where] each [phrase] is repeated two or more times before the bird moves on to the next type... First, one or two descending whistles, out of a repertoire of two to twelve different kinds; then a quieter, continuous warbling, in which imitations of various birds living in the starling's territory are often inserted; the third part of the song is a series of rapid clicks, up to fifteen per second, a rattling or ratcheting with no clear breaks between; finally, the song concludes with loud, high-pitched squeals, repeated many times."

Mr. Rothenberg encourages us to listen to a starling after reading this description. "You'll immediately hear things you did not hear before," he says.

I did what he said, and he was right: the structure of the song was immediately perceptible. I could actually pick up the shifts between phases of the song.

But what still stood out for me through all the of the buzzing and clanking of this small poofy bird was his clattletrap accumulation of observed sounds. I often feel like my job as a designer is much like the starling's everyday song.

Review of "The Designful Company"

“If you wanna innovate, you gotta design.” —Marty Neumeier

From the airy confines of interior design to the tailored minutae of the type designer, the varied disciplines of our profession continue to rush outwards like galaxies fleeing the Big Bang. And the force that drives our profession’s expansion? The universal process we call design.

As designers, we have lived and breathed this process often enough to embody its power, in whatever domain we choose. For a businessperson, however, design is nebulous. A slippery fish. When placed on a slide under the accountant’s microscope, design can perish—even in the most progressive corporate culture. And without design, there is no innovation.

But do not fear. To the rescue is Marty Neumeier, with The Designful Company. Much like Mr. Neumeier’s other bestsellers, The Brand Gap and Zag, his new whiteboard overview is set to completely reinvigorate how our profession engages executives in the boardroom. Finally, we have a shared vocabulary that marries aesthetics to business—and from a book with such simplicity, elegance, and verve, it’s downright humbling...

Read my full review of The Designful Company on The Designer's Review of Books.

Thinking about Intangible User Interfaces

Apple's announcement on Monday regarding the iPhone 3G S, with voice control, represents more than just a way to manage your iPod state and dial phone calls in a hands-free manner. It's an important step in growing new flavors of user interface that are contingent on the intangible into the mainstream.

I'm not talking solely about Voice User Interfaces (VUIs), or the profession of Voice Interaction Design (VIxD), or the many small fiefdoms and associations currently blossoming around human-computer interaction governed by conversational speech systems. These are useful and important niches, but let's think big in our increasingly fractured and over-specialized profession of design.

Let me propose a somewhat radical alternative: roll Voice User Interfaces into a category that I'd like to dub the Intangible User Interface.

We have Graphical User Interfaces, which we know quite well from decades of struggling with operating systems. Our new friends, the Touch and Natural User Interfaces, rely on our physical bodies for operation beyond things like mice and keyboards. Intangible User Interfaces, however, would be a branch of interface that relies on everything but using your physical body in motion as an input mechanism. There's some wobbly semantics around the word "intangible," as it's often used to describe the attributes of a designed system that can't be visibly measured or quantified when observing users. However, it's that specific quality that I want to focus on: input and output contingent on what cannot be seen.

Unsolving the Business Problem

To get to point B, first you need to figure out how you arrived at point A.

Take the following example: You've been asked to lead a half-year marketing project for an international cruise line. They're launching a new luxury cruise liner that serves the Caribbean via Miami. Your new client wants you to help her sell out a full season on the new boat. They have a ton of ideas to share with you on how they can accomplish their goals.

Sitting down for your first meeting—an information-gathering session at corporate headquarters—your responsibility is to determine the scope of the campaign and help brainstorm tactics. After the meeting, you'll write a creative brief and prepare to kick off the project with your design team.

After a few minutes of small talk, your client starts to rattle off the details. Three new ports of call. An Olympic-sized swimming pool on the top deck. A new five-star dining menu with a first-rate wine list. Right away, the design ideas start flowing fast and furious in your mind. In the margin of your notebook, you start a few initial sketches that you just know will sell out all the luxury berths through the entire winter season. Suddenly, you blurt out: "Send the travel agents coconuts!"

Not five minutes had elapsed in your information-gathering session, and you've gone right to work. Such scenarios, where you have a clear vision of design solutions to marry up with a stated marketing goal, often seem serendipitous. But the habit of engaging in design ideation before having a thorough understanding of your client's business context is a bad one that should be broken. I'm not denying the value of intuition in the design process, but rather seeking that we employ our intuition after we have created a strategy by which to focus it.

Which leads to the crux of this scenario. A critical skill for any client-facing designer is the ability to scape away at the surface of a marketing problem to thoroughly understand its business context. Marketing is not business. Marketing is an activity that supports doing business. If you don't have a business context for a marketing project—i.e, understanding what business decisions led to engaging a designer's services to participate in sales and marketing activity—then talking strategy and marketing tactics can be somewhat ungrounded.

So, when situations such as these emerge during a client engagement, I immediately try to "unsolve the business problem." This is the act of shifting a client's conversational focus from the stated marketing problem to the underlying system of business conditions that led to its formation. By understanding the system of challenges in which your client's stated problem stands, you can better serve your client in forging a more strategic, better-designed result.

What follows are eight critical questions you can ask your clients—and glean insight into the business context around their marketing problems.

Do or Die? Six Secrets for Managing Deadlines

The art director shut the door quietly behind me, waving me into a seat. Out the windows of his office, I could see snarls of traffic waiting at a traffic light. Rain sluiced off our building in rhythmic waves. The gray weather outside lulled me into a sense of serenity. I liked my new job and the people that worked there. This was my first big agency job, and so far everyone I'd met had been quite helpful. I didn't know what this meeting was about, but I assumed it regarded a new, exciting client engagement that I would soon tackle.

The first thing out of my boss's mouth?

"The most important rule here is that you don't miss a deadline."

The Top 5 Reasons Why Brainstorms Fail

1. It's not really a brainstorm. Instead, call these meetings "Idea Validation Sessions," where everyone has done their own brainstorming in advance. Now, they simply want to confirm with the group that their ideas are worth executing (or buff their ego). In the worst case scenario, these meetings serve as an opportunity for the top brass in your firm or client organization to show the power they hold over the flow of ideas. You can nip these faux brainstorm sessions in the bud by letting all meeting participants know that their seed ideas are merely a starting point for a much grander journey.

2. The meeting has no structure. Don't carry the illusion that brainstorm means lack of organization. "Let's just get together in a room and the magic will happen," has been the status quo at some agencies I've worked at, and that tack can misfire. Even if you're working with a team so long that you've developed some level of chemistry, consider providing a structure for each meeting. If you don't have an intent for your brainstorm at the outset, including the desired result, you have no way to fulfill your goals. With a group of free-form thinkers, this can become a problem pretty darn fast.

3. You didn't work from the brief. No surer words can raise my hackles than, "Let's just forget about the brief for a second..." I'm completely comfortable with going with gut intuition and throwing on the board any random thing that comes to mind—which is a big stretch for more linear thinkers—but in the end, it always comes back to the brief. If you're ignoring it, you need to ask yourself: Was it even correct in the first place? And why are you brainstorming when you need to go back and correct it?

4. You didn't travel far enough from the realm of logic. If you're free associating, start with close associations, then move your mind into places where there's no association whatsoever. If you're thinking about lunch, write up on the board what you want for lunch. You'll be surprised how those seemingly mundane details become luminous when associated with potential concept directions.

5. There was too much bounce back and forth between free thinking and critique. The brain isn't a light switch you can just toggle back and forth mercilessly between the left and right hemispheres—but if we treat it as such, we subconsciously expect to stay logical and never submerge ourselves fully in more free-form and nonlinear thought. This is a shame, because subconscious and latent thought are what provide the real "meat" in a brainstorm. You can start out with logic when the brainstorm kicks off, but you should try to preserve a suspension of logic through the midpoint of your brainstorm. And the right place for critique is always at the end of a brainstorm, not during it.

On Design Research and Buddhism

I often think about analogues between design research and Buddhism. Not in a practical way—if there is such a thing—but more in a sense of how the process of design attempts to bring a brief moment of permanence to an idea in an ever-fluctuating world. The more meaningful an idea, the more likely it will gain root in the rich soil of our minds.

Ideas are the leavings of an insight—a deeply rooted and observed human truth. Without an insight, good ideas are mere flower petals scattered across the road and apt to float off in a stiff breeze. Beautiful to admire, but no more meaningful than wallpaper.

Smart Design Starts and Ends with Optimism

Optimism is a misunderstood force.

People may delight in such entertainments as the FAIL Blog and the Darwin Awards, but all too often, we are doing so only because the problems in our lives pale by comparison.

This kind of relativism doesn't quite do the trick when it comes to solving problems. We're in pain. We tackle these problems alone, or with a dash of input from our friends. Through much personal struggle, we emerge from these encounters with a dash of wisdom—where we're "on the upside." We most often keep these kernels to ourselves, and share them sparingly in the digital world.

Thinking Beyond Design Thinking

How have design thinking and design aesthetics become such strange befellows?

These past few weeks, I've been meditating on the following quote by Charles Olson regarding the two critical human inputs into a powerfully charged poem:

the HEAD, by the way of the EAR, to the SYLLABLE
the HEART, by way of the BREATH, to the LINE

In Olson's quote, he's referring to his theory of organic poetics, which is a type of poetry that derives its power from closely mimicking the ebb and flow of thought as opposed to falling into the lockstep cadence and strictures of versification, meter, rhyme, and other European contrivances. As a result of this alignment of the head and the heart beyond intellectual constructs, the art that you experience through the eye and the ear inspires direct transmission of experience.

Why is there not such a unity in how we talk about design? Perhaps because we still have no vocabulary around how to describe the most important result of the design process: the direct transmission of knowledge.

Designer, Promote Thyself

DESIGNERS: GREAT AT SOCIAL MEDIA, WEAK AT PRESS RELEASES
Self-Promotion for Designers Now Lacking in Traditional Media; Blogger Makes Case for Teaching Designers Basic Format of Press Releases

Seattle, WA, Thursday, May 7--David Sherwin is admonishing working designers and agencies for not using press releases more often for both self-promotion and coverage of client projects. Even with full-time projects for designers in decline, there are still ways to reach outside the blog and speak to the press.

Traditional media opportunities are on the decline, but they are not out of the picture. "If you don't promote yourself now, when opportunities are slim, you will risk gaining the proper level of exposure when the market improves," Mr. Sherwin said to his empty living room after eating two bites of dark chocolate. "Even if you're a highly active blogger, it doesn't hurt to reach out through traditional media channels. It can aid your blogging and self-promotional efforts when applied effectively."

As part of Mr. Sherwin's ongoing PR education campaign, he outlined the following basic structure for a press release that any designer can use. Whether you've completed a small project, won an award, or have seen the impact of your efforts over time for a client initiative, the form of a press release is always accommodating.

A great press release will contain:

• A headline and an optional subhead. Designers should seek a concise description of the angle you're taking for the overall press release, summarized in a strong headline. A subhead can be added as necessary to "unpack" the drama inherent in the headline.
• The lede. The first paragraph of any press release must include the who, what, when, where, and why of your overall story. Ideally, the lede will be concise enough to be reprinted without any editorial effort on the part of a wire service, press outlet, or blogger.
• Supporting context and quotes. The following paragraphs should provide the grounding for your lede, helping to deepen your argument and create a greater context for your story. Adding in quotes from yourself -- as much as it may hurt to put words in your own mouth in the third person -- is critical. The addition of client quotes is also a great idea, being mindful that you will need to likely write their quote and have them approve it.
• If necessary, long-form data in bullet points. If you have a ton of information to cover, a bulleted list such as this one can provide the right format to showcase the depth of thought required behind a piece of work or an overall campaign. "Quotes can also be included in these data sections as well," said Mr. Sherwin, "which helps liven up lists."
• The boilerplate. Every press release should conclude with boilerplate language, which is where you fully describe who you are, what you do, and how you can be contacted via the Web or phone.
• Showing the work. If you're discussing a campaign or a creative product, consider including photographs within your release or providing links out to downloadable files that journalists and bloggers can reference.

"Closing your press release with an expert point of view can further aid your argument," said Paul Rand, who was contacted by the author via time machine. "But to remain completely professional, be sure that you get written consent from your contributors, unlike David, who decided to utilize my name in conjunction with this fabricated tripe."

About David: Ah, forget the boilerplate. The author of this release would like you be very aware of whom you contact with your press release. Many bloggers do not appreciate being emailed with press releases. Create a list of people whom you feel would appreciate being contacted by you, and then reach out them via email with your story. They will appreciate it, and be more likely to provide you with a PR opportunity.

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Permission Granted: The Heuristics of Design Decisions

Clip out the above coupon, pin it to your corkboard, and fill it out and use it whenever you're struggling to commit to an idea that just feels right.

These past few weeks, a number of people have shared with me truly game-changing design ideas. Most of those people were on the fence regarding whether they should execute on them. There was a fear that their ideas needed to scrutinized more closely before they were made real.

In every single case, without reservation, I told them to go for it. Not just because I thought their ideas were great (though they all were). My actions were grounded in recent research into heuristics, and how they can apply to design thinking.

Hacking Your Design Habits

These past few weeks, I've been trying to watch how my interaction with my laptop and desktop computer changes the quality of what I design.

As an example: When I'm writing copy for a web page, I often key it directly into the Photoshop comp and try to design the layout around it. However, if I'm writing copy divorced from layout, it invariably ends up being too long, and I end up struggling with paring it down to half of its length.

At this point, I usually go for a walk or take on another task until I've achieved enough detachment to find new angles for editing the content. But recently I thought of a new tack: reading copy off the screen and transcribing it onto a sticky note. In the process of writing the copy longhand into a tiny square, I don't even have to think about what I need to edit. New words suggest themselves just because I'm writing at the speed of my body, not the speed of my mind.

That was just one example of design hacking. Another design hack I've been experimenting with is practicing Surrealist automatism in meetings, then bringing ideas from the automatic drawing into my work. Automatism is a practice derived from Surrealist poets such as André Breton, which swiftly leapt into the drawing and painting work of André Masson, Miró, Dalî, and many others.

How do you do it? The next time you're in a meeting -- the more procedural, the better -- allow your pencil in your notebook to move freely. Keep your rational mind occupied: focus on what's being said with your rational mind, and participate in the conversation. And be sure to avoid trying to craft or shape what emerges consciously. You aren't trying to draw. You're just drawing.

After the meeting is over and when you're back at your desk, look down at what you've written. What accidents and chance marks on the page are suggestive to you? How could they evolve into ideas that, when the opportunity arises, infiltrate one of your designs?

Always Try to Diversify

A long time ago, I worked at a firm that had a major telecommunications client. Over 50% of our monthly billings were derived from creating logos and names for new product launches, helping to brainstorm print ads and direct mailers, and otherwise serving as a creative sounding board. There was no retainer agreement, only projects that were opened with a rough time estimate and hourly rate.

It was creative nirvana. You could spend as little or as much time as you wanted on a project, as long as you had a range of thinking in your comps. Our clients trusted us, and we trusted them.

My wife and I had been discussing moving to Seattle for some time, and the final decision to make the move was very difficult -- mainly because this firm was such a great place to work. I gave my notice, my wife and I packed up our place and hopped in our car for a month-long cross-country jaunt. One morning in Chicago, while staying at a family member's place, I saw in the paper that my client's company had misstated earnings across all of their financial statements and was going to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Client goes poof, at least in the short- to mid-term. My former job vanished as well; they never rehired for the position. There's no way our clients in marketing or my boss could have ever known that would happen... and the client never recovered.

It's easy to be optimistic about what you can control in your designer/client relationship. You can make your clients happy and keep the bucks rolling in. But you can't control their business decisions beyond what you design and the observed impact of your designs in the world.

You can inform them and provide insight. You can educate them regarding what their options are strategically and tactically. You can even be Chief Design Officer and sit at the big polished mahogany table powering up your big presentation on how you'll optimize their customer experience and rethink their brand and make amazing new products that will bring in billions.

But you aren't the CEO. You aren't the Chairman of the Board. You control your domain, and unless you're the honcho who's dealing with the shareholders and making the tough decisions on critical business issues, you're SOL.

This is why you need to diversify.

And it isn't just about money. There are many sound reasons to pursue a more diverse client base, starting now...

Four Common-Sense Clauses for Design Contracts

It's incredible how a single sentence in your contract can throw a total wrench into an otherwise simple mid-project negotiation.

I'm no contracts lawyer, but after living through a good number of stumbles, I've started to mandate a few critical contract terms in my client agreements. If you're looking to be professional and be clear about IP ownership in the midst of a mid- to long-term design engagement, you should see if you include these kinds of terms in your standard design contract.*

Stop Trying Ritual

1. Notice you're being too critical of your design on the screen
2. Move away from your computer and find a nice quiet space
3. Take out your notebook and draw the first thing you remember this morning after the alarm went off
4. Write five words that your drawing reminds you about
5. Draw a fancy chart highlighting the relationships between those five words
6. Pour yourself the last dregs of coffee and take a slow sip
7. Focus on your breath
8. Take the book nearest to you, go to page 34, and copy down the 3rd sentence in the second paragraph next to (or within) the chart
9. Go back to the computer, print the most recent version of your design, and place your sketchbook next to it
10. Take at least one element from your notebook and place it into your design