As noted earlier, the fine folks at AQ have renewed their site recently. Chris posted about the project way back, and noted how intense it had been to play both roles of client and supplier. I wonder if he considered the possibility that he, as an experienced web designer, could be a terrifying client for a web agency? I found the “stepping under the net” image quite astute: but are we feeling equally comfortable on both sides?
A client-facing design process allows the team (among other things) to bring to light the client’s purpose, and contextualize it from the point of view of his target group (because the web is a self-help medium). The client brings in his audience. The web agency reaches the client’s audience primarily through the client. (You will definitely want to do some research on your own, and usability testing is done with “real” people, but it’s the client’s vision of his audience that matters strategically.) The audience, or potential audience, is a brain child of the client.
A self-promotion project will involve the single-handed creation of an audience, identification of a purpose and production of a web site communicating the latter to the former, all in one go!
This would be easier if the wizardry of web building didn’t involve some tricks. No dishonest ones, mind you, just useful bits like persona and usage scenarios that get the client to stand in the shoes of a member of his audience for a minute, for example. Part role-playing, part psychoanalysis, part bullfighting, they’re part of giving shape to the product. (Note: the bull can be both client and web agency alternatively!)
Such tricks work because they’re checked from both sides of the net: you’re relying on each other.
But one can’t tell oneself a joke, can one? The tricks will probably feel painfully artificial and self-conscious. In fact, you know yourself too well, in both roles, and you might even fear yourself a little: there’s no fooling the guy in the mirror!
In the end, you have to ultimately trust your experience and instincts, as there will be no outside confirmation that your assumption are not mistaken, that you haven’t overlooked anything important in your scoping, that your positioning is correct, and, most of all, that you haven’t let yourself be goaded on by the project, lured by the feature for its own sake or the design you love but everyone else will hate.
Self-analysis has limits, and all shrinks see a shrink of their own. So as a web agency, you could decide to ask for external advice, for an external perspective. But then again, why wouldn’t you hire another agency to work on your site?
You could also show self-confidence and rely on your own experience. Self-promotion is harder than working an external client because of the lack of parallax — and the failure of all tools that rely on this difference of perspectives. But it can also be satisfying because you get to run with your ideas and try them out in the real world.
Ultimately, ideas don’t come from tools or processes — the tools are only there to harness the ideas, to ensure that the client’s context, initially unknown to the web agency, is appropriately taken into account.
This new site conveys AQ’s identity, and engages both the visitor with a purpose and the passer-by. Could a process have improved it? I don’t think so!
The Most Terrifying Client
As noted earlier, the fine folks at AQ have renewed their site recently. Chris posted about the project way back, and noted how intense it had been to play both roles of client and supplier. I wonder if he considered the possibility that he, as an experienced web designer, could be a terrifying client for a web agency? I found the “stepping under the net” image quite astute: but are we feeling equally comfortable on both sides?
A client-facing design process allows the team (among other things) to bring to light the client’s purpose, and contextualize it from the point of view of his target group (because the web is a self-help medium). The client brings in his audience. The web agency reaches the client’s audience primarily through the client. (You will definitely want to do some research on your own, and usability testing is done with “real” people, but it’s the client’s vision of his audience that matters strategically.) The audience, or potential audience, is a brain child of the client.
A self-promotion project will involve the single-handed creation of an audience, identification of a purpose and production of a web site communicating the latter to the former, all in one go!
This would be easier if the wizardry of web building didn’t involve some tricks. No dishonest ones, mind you, just useful bits like persona and usage scenarios that get the client to stand in the shoes of a member of his audience for a minute, for example. Part role-playing, part psychoanalysis, part bullfighting, they’re part of giving shape to the product. (Note: the bull can be both client and web agency alternatively!)
Such tricks work because they’re checked from both sides of the net: you’re relying on each other.
But one can’t tell oneself a joke, can one? The tricks will probably feel painfully artificial and self-conscious. In fact, you know yourself too well, in both roles, and you might even fear yourself a little: there’s no fooling the guy in the mirror!
In the end, you have to ultimately trust your experience and instincts, as there will be no outside confirmation that your assumption are not mistaken, that you haven’t overlooked anything important in your scoping, that your positioning is correct, and, most of all, that you haven’t let yourself be goaded on by the project, lured by the feature for its own sake or the design you love but everyone else will hate.
Self-analysis has limits, and all shrinks see a shrink of their own. So as a web agency, you could decide to ask for external advice, for an external perspective. But then again, why wouldn’t you hire another agency to work on your site?
You could also show self-confidence and rely on your own experience. Self-promotion is harder than working an external client because of the lack of parallax — and the failure of all tools that rely on this difference of perspectives. But it can also be satisfying because you get to run with your ideas and try them out in the real world.
Ultimately, ideas don’t come from tools or processes — the tools are only there to harness the ideas, to ensure that the client’s context, initially unknown to the web agency, is appropriately taken into account.
This new site conveys AQ’s identity, and engages both the visitor with a purpose and the passer-by. Could a process have improved it? I don’t think so!