#client-centric design

Paul Boag is tired of hearing web designers complain about clients. The founder of HeadScape, a design consultancy based in the UK, says he’s unnerved by what he perceives as a trend of web designers bashing client work in favor running off and making web apps instead.

“I disagree with that quite strongly. If you want to go make web apps, that’s fine. But don’t suggest that it’s because client work sucks,” he says. “It’s a reflection of your own shortcomings if you don’t know how to manage and work with clients effectively.”

At Future Insights Live, Boag will be presenting on what he calls “client-centric design,” an approach to client work that aims to serve both client and designer equally. Boag’s three principles of client-centric design are:

You don’t just build a website. You offer a service. “Sending a client away happy is a fundamental part of our job. It is one of our deliverables. If a client isn’t happy with a web site, what happens is they don’t invest in the website or keep it going over the long term because they’re dissatisfied.”  

The client is essential to making a successful website. “I think a lot of web designers have the perception that they make great websites despite the client, and they try to exclude the client from the process as much as possible. I propose the opposite of that. You should take a collaborative approach with your clients.”

Client-centric design is more important than user-centric design. “There’s an attitude in the web design community that you need to put the needs of the user above everything else. And the logic of that is sound — if you make the users happy, you make the business successful. The problem is that some people get so obsessed with making the users happy that they do so at the cost of the business.” For example, Boag cites the case of a law firm who needed a new website. All the research said users wanted the focus of the site to be on their particular lawyer, who in many cases is a superstar in his or her field. However, lawyers jump from firm to firm all the time — so the business needed to keep the association with the firm itself rather than the individual lawyer. The solution was to downplay the user’s needs (while still providing the information they wanted) while focusing on the total breadth of knowledge in the firm itself.

Boag has collated these key principles into a structured approach to working with clients for his forthcoming book, Client-Centric Design. He says the approach laid out in the book may or may not be right for any particular client/designer relationship. The important thing is to offer clients a structured approach that is collaborative and accepting of client ideas.