Each time a child asks why and receives an answer it generally asks it again and again and each time we have to get more specific with our answer or at least make it a little more descriptive to provide more context. Sometimes we run out of answers on the 9th time but we try our best.

Surely at such an early age, children cannot treat the first answer we give them as the only answer they’d receive. Do they think we’re joking with our first answer? Probably not. Once we start answering the same question a 2nd and 3rd time the child knows we can go as far as that. Each time we make our answers longer and eventually the child will get as much context and description as they’d ever get and understand ‘why’ better than they ever could.

I’ve never stopped asking why nor I ever will. This is both a good and bad thing. To a point it’s like a slight OCD, I have to understand the why. If I can’t fathom the why, I become easily frustrated or put up barriers to the information I’m hearing. If I don’t understand something, I’ll keep asking why until I do understand as each time I ask there will be more within an answer. Understanding the why is a little easier out of conversations than in them, I can research and read my way to an answer with more context. In discussion, the people I am talking to can unfortunately become frustrated with the amount of information I require without me explaining my questioning in the first place but I feel they still need to be asked.

The reasons why should ALWAYS be known.

I often bring this in to my work as I expect rather than assume that people other than myself would like to know the reason why they should either do something or use something before doing it. This information should be available to read or see at the lowest barrier of entry, it should be a gate that can be pushed open rather than the need for a key to unlock. By that I mean that a user should not have to think about the why and should move instantly to visualising themselves doing the action.

They and we should ‘Understand The Why’.

It’s too easy for us when building a product to build it for us, to have a feature list that WE want. Unless you are very controlled it is far too easy to create an ever growing feature list the size of an aircraft carrier. This is bad when you’re wanting the product to be like streamlined submarine as we all know aircraft carriers do not fit inside of submarines.

Take more time to realise that your users and yourself are so different in reality. Just because you want to do something one way doesn’t make it the same for someone else using the product. Always act on the side of caution and focus on what a user would want to do with your product from various places and make decisions accordingly.

You can limit feature creep extremely well by remembering that what a user wants and needs are COMPLETELY different. On top of that remember that what you want in your product, a user might not need.

I’m like a kid at Christmas when I know I can get my head deep in to photoshop and start creating some visuals.

How happy I was walking, listening and thinking reminded me of New York when I was there last year.

Jen and I had walked up and down Manhattan a couple of times but on this particular day it seems to be packed. If I remember correctly we were on our way back from the Financial District and decided to criss-cross over to fifth ave. We were wandering around as tourists do, getting in everyones way when I heard a guy singing. Generally in the UK people busk so it’s not un-common to hear buskers on the street however this was closer, this was right behind me.

I looked over my shoulder to find a young guy, early twenties singing at the top of his voice dancing in and out of the people around him without a care in the world. Most people would have branded him as mad, but you know, I bet he was the happiest guy in New York on that day because he couldn’t have cared less.

He was happy in what he was doing, just like I am today with my head stuck in Photoshop.

So next time just stop and simplify.

I would hazard a guess that the majority of people within our industry are probably cooped up inside four walls a little bit too long, too long for our mental state and most definitely too long for our physical well being.

Mental/Physical Fitness

A lack of mental fitness can almost certainly break a designer, it’s like a large dark cloud covering our creative brain bringing us to a complete halt. It can stop our inspiration in its tracks. What almost surely affects our mental and creative ability is our physical fitness. Personally I can directly relate to me being physically fit and my creative peaks against being less physically fit and feeling I’m not doing the best job I could.

My physical fitness enables me to be more awake during the day making me more efficient when I need to be and creative / inspirational when called upon.

It would seem that a few people from the industry also seem to think the same, three names which spring to mind are Jeffrey Zeldman, Chris Spooner and David Perel who all go to the gym on a regular basis. Jeffrey has discussed in one of his Big Web Show’s about the reasons why he started taking more care with his physical fitness, I believe Chris has explained before that heading to the gym or walking his dog Jake is one of the only opportunities that he gets to leave his office during the day. If he didn’t have those things to do he’d almost spend all week without leaving the same building.

Quite a while ago, Andy McMillan, the founder of Build Conference in Belfast started a little food blog. In one of his first blog posts he said that he wanted to lose a certain amount of weight before his next conference and he setup a sponsorship page to give him the inclination to do it properly and stick with it. I thought it was a fantastic idea. Around the same time, I hadn’t been to a gym for quite some time and wanted to do something about my physical fitness.

A short while after I started dieting… thinking that I would be able to lose some sort of weight before I went on holiday. A short while after that I stopped dieting. I had no self-confidence in myself to be able to continue with it, at the time I was quite stressed and that overwhelmed me. I’ve since longed to do it again, but properly.

The day came when I randomly jumped on the scales, looked down and went into instant shock. I was literally at the peak weight which I’ve only been at one other time in my life. I was upset and angry that it had got to that. It is not that I did not know that it was happening but it still came as a shock and I knew something had to change.

Research

I went away and researched how not to diet, I didn’t want to get taken in these so called ‘diet groups’ and I simply just wanted to be healthier. I found that your body burnt calories by itself when you were sleeping so you started at a certain point and if you ate less than your daily allowance then you’d start to lose weight. Sounds obvious?

I went from eating pizza’s, McDonald’s, pub meals and general rubbish to healthier meals like salads, fish and vegetables. I started having pro-biotic yoghurt’s for breakfast, soup for lunch, fruit throughout the day and ending with a dinner of chicken salads. This happened everyday during the working week, I kept to it Mon-Fri. On a weekend I ate what I wanted and still do. I also stopped drinking bottles of coke and sandwiches, I now keep away from bread as best I can. I gave up alcohol and only very rarely now have an alcoholic drink.

I started this new life in June and to date, I’ve lost over a stone in weight without trying. A few weeks ago I joined our new local gym and am going 4 times a week, this will increase over time as my fitness levels increase.

What does this have to do with design?

I feel more creative as I’m happier with myself and definitely happier with my work. That large black cloud now very rarely rears its ugly head which I’m more than happy about.

I truly believe that if you feel that you have the cloud hanging over your head, try to go out and find some sort of physical exercise that you can do. Whether it be joining a gym, running or swimming I firmly believe that you’ll feel better for it. I certainly do.

A big shift.

Don’t get me wrong I’ve been in the same position, in the early days. Way back when we were designing static websites with just a few pages it was quite easy to work through the process of designing and building. Over the course of a year we might only have to add one or two things but probably nothing which would change the physical design of the templates we had already constructed.

We as designers no longer design websites. FACT. Whenever someone asks what I do, I generally say that I produce the DIBI Conference because avoiding answering the long drawn out answer for what I ‘really’ do is just easier. Answering ‘I design stuff’ just doesn’t cut it anymore and if the person you’re talking to is non-design and non-technical they look at your completely blank anyway. Websites are old news, they’re the 5 pager you designed for your local cleaning service. Due to the huge array of content creation systems like WordPress / ExpressionEngine / Joomla, we as designers could in essence create some templates and then let the user develop the content. That is all well and good if creating content is just what your client wants.

A website is no longer a website. It’s a business, I’d go as far as saying that 90% of websites are predominantly the main money earner in most businesses. Whether that be direct revenue like advertising, product buying or the lead in for a sale. Within every business things change, and when things change adjustments have to be made. Designers need to listen, look, analyze and improve our designs on a constant basis. Just because things might work for the first few weeks after a design has launched doesn’t mean it will in a few months.

Iteration, Iteration, Iteration…

We don’t plan, sketch, wire-frame, structure and architect for nothing. We need to listen first and act, if something needs to scale, it needs to scale! If it’s going to scale then you had better get it in your head that the design will change over due course. Iteration is key, if you’re designing and building something, get it out of the door early and sit back and watch. Analyze how users are using it, what can be made better and just because it is live don’t ever think that its done and dusted.

Tell your clients…

Clients tend to think that once they have their ‘website’, web app or system that everything is finished. They find it hard to understand that just because it is live it’s not actually finished. I’ve tried to explain this multiple times and have ended up with that cold blank stare. I’ve since figured out a much easier way to discuss why the design and development of a system is never complete and this is what I say.

You buy a brand new house, it’s very big and strong. It’s made of bricks, has a sturdy waterproof roof and you’re all ready for moving in. The removal men help you move in putting all of your worldly belongings in the right place. Two weeks later you notice some cracks appearing around the door and window frames. Not because the house is breaking, but its settling in to its foundations. Nine out of ten times these little cracks just need filled over. Over more time you’ll realise that you need a lampshade, carpets and a new colorful wall in the entrance area to the house. Your house is never finished, in the same way as your new system will never be finished.

Take Note

Your design will never be complete because it was never meant to be in the first place. It can only ever be great as perfect is only ever in the future and you’re not there yet.

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I’m one for looking further in to design more than just the surface aesthetics. I like to know the reasons why things have been done in a certain way. I regularly ask myself questions like;

• Is that there for a reason?
• Would I read and take note of that text?
• Does that color affect my decision to do something?

I’m currently working on a set of projects which are all linked. Each project is pretty epic, not because of sheer size but more because of the importance of the data they present. I’ve been asking myself the three questions above every time I sit back and look at the design. I’ve been researching persuasive text and the theories behind what text people read against text that people glance over and take no notice of. These theories are easy for me to understand as I have a huge interest in psychology and neuro-linguistic programming anyway.

Placement and content organization/structure is another area which I understand very well, if you want to read more about the subject you can find a great article on Web Designer Depot.

This leaves me with Call to Action buttons, the one area that I’m not expertly knowledged in. I’ve always wanted to be, I’ve always wanted to test designs by doing A/B testing but have never been in the situation to do so until now. Just the other day I tweeted about the subject to get some clarity from my twitter followers. I’d sat playing with the same call to action button for about an hour, working the right color in to the design I was creating. I sat back and thought, “What happens if this color doesn’t invoke the action I want?” I wanted to know if there was a specific color which converts more than any other. I was greeted with a series of links, specifically from @JohnONolan which said that the color red has a higher conversion rate. I was taken back as I would have took a wild guess that green would have been the better color as it’s usually linked with ‘go’.

Evidently there is something behind a green call-to-action button as the likes of 37Signals Basecamp website and Squarespace use green. I couldn’t even think off the top of my head who uses a red call-to-action button so went on the hunt and found Carelogger who were showcased in an article and Performable.

There is definitely something behind this red call-to-action but though, out of the tests that I could find the red button could out do the green button by anyway near to 20%. That’s a huge number of extra conversions for whatever type of service you’re offering.

I will test this myself when we launch the current project and split test against using a green / red call-to-action button, it would be great to hear your own thoughts about test you’ve done or case studies you have read. Below are a few articles which I found on the subject.

• UX Booth’s Good Call To Action Buttons
• Performable.com’s Red beats Green
• Performable.com’s Red vs Green Buttons Redux

If you want to hear more about the subject in the future, be sure to follow me on Twiter.

One of  the things when you’re starting out in a design career is how to collect design requirements from a potential client. Granted it seems easy enough to sit with them and write down everything they say but you’ll get back to your desk and feel yourself staring at your notes without a clue of what the job entailed.

There are a few valid reasons as to why you need to collect designer/job requirements in an effective manner.

THE THEORY

Understanding the Job

A client meeting is the time for you to impress, and one way of impressing a client is to show a complete understanding of what they require. You can do this in various way or simply by listening and asking pertinent questions that you get clear answers back for. If you sound like you know what you’re doing then the trust built in that one meeting, might be enough for you to win the job all together.

Understanding the Client

All of our clients have their own expectations, whether it comes down to design or function. If we can ask all the questions we need, at least then we’ll have the information to work from. It doesn’t matter if we as professionals know better, at least we can discuss their points with them. We can ask for favorite color schemes, we can inquire about ‘look and feel’ aesthetics that they like. All of this information can help in setting up a mood board.

Being able to Quote Correctly

Collecting detailed requirements of a job enable you to quote more effectively as you will have all of the information to plan out time and resources that will be required to complete the project. It is important to quote correctly for both you and your prospective client. Clients certainly don’t want to be surprised by an over compensated quote, after all you’d like to take on the work you’re quoting for and you want to make sure you quote exactly for what is entailed within the job requirements. Not quoting correctly will mean that you’ll be doing a lot of work for little reward.

PRACTICALLY COLLECTING REQUIREMENTS

Various designers use a different means to collect requirements. Below are a few hand-picked designers showing how they collect information.

Sam Brown (Massive Blue)

Sam Brown uses an online form on a contact page for prospective clients to input a minimal amount of information including a potential client budget. This helps to narrow down and possibly ween out any unwanted clientele.

Sarah Parmenter (YouKnowWho)

Sarah goes in to a lot of detail asking a list of specific questions to potential clients. These are all initial questions as Sarah also provides a website worksheet for you to download, fill in a upload back to Sarah.

Andy Clarke (Stuff and Nonsense)

Andy Clarke goes for a smaller amount of questions with the addition of a ‘Work requisition sheet’ which can be downloaded, filled in and sent back. Andy adds a project budget drop down on to the contact form with general budget guidelines.

David Pache (Helvetic Brands)

David Pache’s primary work is branding, and the rules certainly don’t change for the way requirements are collected. David’s primary way of collecting the design/job requirements are via his website using an online form. The form is quite extensive but asks all of the relevant questions that will aid in writing the correct quote.

HOW DO YOU COLLECT REQUIREMENTS?

If you don’t have an online form on your website you can use services such as Wufoo.com and Icebrrg.com, online form creators where you can build your own form. They have various memberships that allow different various additional perks like being able to upload documents etc.

Of course you can do the same as some of the above by using downloadable word documents, every business will need a different worksheet depending on the work you deliver however I’ve put together a rough outlined document which is free to download and use. All you need to do is add in your own questions, company name and contact details.

Download PDF / Download Word Document.

Is there anything you would add in or change? Let me know in the comments below as I’d like to update this from everyone’s feedback.

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