Archive for March, 2010

Save Clients from Themselves

Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

I would love what I do more if it wasn’t for all these clients… What?!?

That’s not true… I feel that way at times, but it’s not true.

That feeling comes when I know I just let a client walk all over me. It’s not their fault you see… It’s mine. Sometimes I’m afraid to lose a client, so I will lie down and let them wipe their shoes on my back.

Again; it’s not their fault. They are just asking for things they think they need. And who can blame them. They have a goal to get more sales and all they are doing is trying to get this particular ad, or that particular sales page, or this particular web site in perfect shape to capture the most sales and leads they can.

But Mike, how come it seems like every time this happens it is always last minute rushed items that go against everything I know about design, user experience and overall business practices?

Good question campers… I’ll tell you why – Because you haven’t trained your clients.

Look, I know it’s easier said than done. There is a lot of competition out there for what we do. The last thing anyone wants to do is make a client, who is paying you with real money and everything, mad enough to leave you.

This thinking is silly. If you have clients that have been with you and have enjoyed the work that you do chances are they want to stay with you. If you have a client that hangs the “I might go somewhere else because they will do everything I say and they are cheaper” threat over your head you may want to evaluate that relationship to see if there is any benefit to having it. I know; I know… the whole paying with real money thing… Your time and skill set is worth more than that. You don’t need to take that kind of abuse.

So… what’s this whole “training my clients” thing all about? Another good question campers… you are very sharp today.

The way I want to discuss today is: you can make your client realize, beyond the shadow of doubt, that last minute changes and guessing is going to hurt their business. How do you do that? Charge them “rush fees” or “late fees.”

I can hear it… you’re saying “whoa, whoa, whoa there horsey… that is not going to go well.”

It can go well. You need to have a very open and honest conversation about what your time is worth with your client. Tell them what your rate is and tell them what your rate is when things are outside your normal agreed upon turnaround time. Show them some examples of work that was done with a reasonable turnaround and compare it to something that was done with a “drop it like it’s hot” timeline. Point out how much better the project could have gone if you had the proper time to execute. And most importantly… explain in detail what you personally gave up to get this project done on that timeline. You need to show your client that your personal time has a value to it and if a project needs to invade that time there will be a cost associated with it.

Chances are a good, conscientious client will look at that and say… “We won’t need to use the rush charges; we’ll have all our stuff hammered out in reasonable time.” That may not always be the case… life does move in mysterious ways and there may be a day that they will have to rush something.

Now… the flip side of that is you will inevitably get a client who doesn’t understand what you mean by “rush charges” and will feel the sting when they get the bill. It may take their breath away and you may even need to have a conversation about it. This will be your opportunity to reinforce and explain that the “rush charge” protects them and puts them at the top of the priority of all other work going on. You also can make sure they understand the value of your time once again.

A good client will grumble a bit, but they will understand in the long run and do their best not to have anymore “rush charges.” Good clients, over time, understand the value of your time and want the relationship to work because they see that it is mutually beneficial. A good client will appreciate the reminder that they have a part to play in this relationship.

Bad clients will do one of two things; they will either drop you because they think your rush charges are outrageous or they will keep giving you last minute projects because they don’t care about “rush charges.” This then, is your opportunity to evaluate the value of this client.

The bottom line is, if you make your clients aware of how awesome the project is going to turn out given the proper time to execute, how valuable your time is both professionally and personally, and how you are willing to help them out any way you can to make this mutually beneficial relationship work, you will have a happy client who will agree to the terms of your relationship and respect the value of your time and talent.

Saving your clients from themselves sometimes requires a little “tough love.” The sting of the “rush charge” can right the ship at times. It may even teach your clients to prepare better on their end and help you deliver an amazing product for them.

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Posted in Business, Clients | 1 Comment »

Not So Free Testing

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

I recently was reading a blog post by @michaelseidel where he talks about user testing conducted with a larger company. He talks about testing a cross section of users – internal and external.

What does that mean?

External users are people who are recruited from all walks of life that don’t work for the company. They are individuals who may be interested in buying your products or services.

Internal users are people who work at the company. They may not have any association with the product that you are testing, but they are familiar with it. (Ex. Accounting staff to help test a website feature for the travel industry.)

Michael points out various reasons why companies want to test internal people and one stuck out most to me:

“Really, who can beat the, um, fiscal cheapness of testing people who are already working for you anyway?”

That may be the view of the company, but it is definitely not the case. It is expensive to test internal employees and they might be more expensive to test than paying external subjects.

The companies view is simple: “We are paying these people anyway, why not just grab them out of their cubes or in the hallway and sit them down for the usability test.”

What they fail to see is these people, all be it on the clock, are working on projects and tasks that are not related to the test. Their day is interrupted by this test and the value of their time should not be measured just by what the company is paying them.

These users time is valuable to a lot of people in the company. Their time is worth a lot to the project team they are working with; they have tasks that need to be complete that others on the project are depending on. They have to stop what they are doing, go to where the test is conducted, switch their mindset to give comprehensive answers in the usability test, and then switch gears when the test is over and try to pick up where they left off prior to the test.

Now, this may be easy for some and may not have that big of an impact on this persons time or concentration; but multiply that by 10 users. Now there is a bigger impact… now you are talking about potentially losing a day’s worth of work on a project or several projects.

These costs are rarely taken into consideration; in fact, they are generally overlooked all together. Companies who feel that internal user testing is the only way to go need to take a look at the opportunity cost a bit more closely.

Posted in User Experience | No Comments »

Where Group Think Fails

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

Last week, Sue Spaight (@SueSpaight) wrote a fantastic blog post titled “Being Veruca Salt in a Corporate Culture.” In it she mentions that she took a psych evaluation for one of the companies she worked for and it concluded that she was “too independent and entrepreneurial to function in the confines of a corporate organization.” The point of her post was that she can be a team player but when decisions need to be made she would prefer to make them and move on. She is challenged by notion of “buy-in” from the group.

I personally don’t blame her.

Her post got me thinking a lot about “group dynamics” and “group think” and where those concepts completely fail in a corporate environment.

Group think usually takes on a couple of forms in the corporate environment –the one that Sue briefly described as “buy-in” or getting a “vote” and one that gets people from different areas of the company involved for “fresh perspective.”

The “buy-in” type of group think I have been witness to looks something like this:

A company forms a committee and funnels important decisions through this committee in order to get all discipline areas of the company an equal say in what is being decided. The thought is, if every department is on the same page the company will be more efficient in making their products and the communication will flow throughout the organization more evenly and effectively. Basically the stars will always align and the company will practically be clairvoyant to any problems that my come up.

The reality of this situation is these meetings happen behind closed doors with the heads of all these departments. Chances are they have a ton of other meetings and go from one to the next; so communication does not flow like natural spring water. Departments go about their business to get their work done and there is a host of problems that pop up the company can’t see coming.

This also creates what I call the “communication shelf.” Information from the people doing all the daily work needs to flow up to this committee so they can discuss and make decisions on this information. Then those decisions need to flow up to the “stake holders” or the “owners” to make sure those decisions align with the overall vision of the company and the direction it needs to go in. That direction is communicated back to the committee so they can make sure their decisions line up. That information is suppose to flow from the committee back down to the people actually doing all the work so they understand what tasks are priorities and what needs to get done to accomplish the overall vision.

Unfortunately, the “shelf” holds all the information and most of the time the information stays on the shelf… it doesn’t flow through it very well. And the information that does flow through usually is lost in translation. The shelf is not experts on everything that the workers do, so sometimes they can’t articulate the information provided to the “stake holders” in a manner that makes sense. Then, wrong decisions are made on misrepresented information. Secondly, sometimes the shelf has a hard time explaining the business objectives to the workers and the wrong things are prioritized or products are built that miss the mark because of a wrong read on what is being communicated.

Despite the good intentions of the committee or “shelf” this method of decision making actually grinds progress down to a snail’s pace and it is incredibly hard to move anything forward. This method has also been known to create an incredible amount rework do to the communication gaps. In the end this type of group think becomes incredibly frustrating for a company.

The “fresh perspective” type of group think is rife with problems as well. The premise of this situation is getting people from different areas of the company together to talk about future products or projects that are around the corner in order to get ideas from people who normally aren’t part of the “discovery phase.” The thought is that there is a lot of untapped knowledge in the company and there may be people who have great ideas and never have had a forum to express them.

Unfortunately the group dynamics usually prevents things from getting accomplished. There are vast differences in personality types in these groups and the utopian results the group organizers are looking for rarely occur.

The personas usually break down along these lines:

  • The “over eager newbie” who wants to contribute and show their enthusiasm and ideas despite having very little knowledge of what is being discussed.
  • The “naysayer” who will try to find issue with every point that is brought up in the group.
  • The “silent type” who hates forced participation and refuses to speak up in a group setting.
  • The “I don’t get it” who was brought in from HR or accounting who doesn’t have a fundamental understanding of the product or project that is being discussed but wants to learn.
  • The “know it all” who will explain how to accomplish every idea in great detail down to the smallest level (Ex: We can just write some code that calls a service to bring back that data).
  • The “cheerleader” who tries to get everyone involved by overly encouraging every idea that is presented.
  • The “over agreer” who agrees with everyone in the room even if there is opposing views.

This mix of individuals a long with some others come together and try to decide a direction or feature set for products or the overall scope of a project. There is little chance that anything close to that will get accomplished. There too many people involved in this conversation who are incapable of making a decision.

More times than not what comes out of these groups is a watered down version of a recommendation that needs to go up to the “shelf” for a decision. The recommendation gets further watered down by the “shelf” and what is left is something that doesn’t end up benefiting anyone and spent an exorbitant amount of time to get there.

Decision makers are needed. Things move forward in business by people who are willing to stick their neck out and make decisions to do things. Committees and group think is a way for individuals to avoid accountability in a decision that went wrong.

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Gorilla Usability

Monday, March 8th, 2010

“Wait… if I read the title correctly… are you talking about how people should go about using a gorilla?!?” No silly… it’s a play on words. What I am talking about is a usability study that @michaelseidel and I conducted recently @AJBombers. I want to share how you can do usability studies without breaking the bank.

Traditionally, I have participated in usability studies that have been conducted in a lab. We recruit about 10-15 users and pay them about $100 each to come in and test a website in a lab while designers, developers and business owners sit behind 2-way mirrors and watch the subjects interact with a website. We double book each time slot to make sure we get a participant in every slot and we still pay the people we don’t use. We write scenarios for the users to walk though and we have a couple of usability specialists walking the users though the scenarios and taking copious notes. We analyse the results after each user and compile all the information into a recommendation document.

These type of sessions were the status quo in the past. Unfortunately, these sessions were expensive and time consuming. They were necessary at the time, but the 800 lb. Gorilla in the room (see what I did there) was the cost of these sessions. There may still be a very limited place for this type of testing; however, there is another way…

So here is what we did… We are working on a section of a website that has a search mechanism and refinement tools that help the user narrow the results based on criteria they select. The refinement tools could be placed in 2 different spots on the results page. We wanted to test what position gave the best user experience for these tools.

We didn’t have a lot of time to plan a full blown (gorilla) usability lab and we didn’t have the budget for it either. So what we did is turn to social media and offered free lunch.

We started kicking around ideas on how to get good user testing without breaking the bank when it hit us; we could turn to Twitter to recruit users for this and we need to set up the testing somewhere that is convenient for our local networks to meet. We also need some sort of compensation for these users time. We came up with the perfect spot – AJBombers.

I decided to contact Joe from AJbombers and bounce the idea off him. I told him that we were going to conduct a user study and test some options of a website. I also mentioned that we were planning on buying all our participants lunch at his place. He was more than happy to help us out, in fact, he was excited about it.

We started out by broadcasting via Twitter what we were planning to do and when. Joe helped us out by Re-tweeting it to his loyal following which spurred a good response. The great thing about this entire approach was we planned it on a Friday for the following Wednesday and we filled all the spots we were looking for with very little effort. A few tweets and some re-tweets and we were good to go.

On the day of the testing Joe gave us a prime location to set up so we could funnel users through during the time slots we had set aside and we had a great system for getting food and drink orders started with our awesome waitress “B the Tweetless.” while the testing was going on. I was completely amazed how smoothly the entire session went seeing as this was our first attempt at doing anything like this.

The test went great; we noticed that the atmosphere is more realistic in a setting like that compared to a lab environment. The lab comes off as clinical and stiff. This was relaxed and the users seemed more comfortable in this enviroment… less spotlighty. People were willing to have a conversation about what we were testing; it didn’t come across as a rigid question and answer session. The feedback we gathered was genuine and gave us insight into things about the site we weren’t even testing. It also seemed like people were more grateful with receiving lunch than paying them cash to come out to our lab. “This is it? This is all I need to do? I feel like I need to do more to receive a free lunch.”

The test was a major success. We were able to test 10 users over 3 hours and under $200 total. This method of testing is completely viable, portable, and cost effective. This will now become our preferred method of testing moving forward. Granted, there will still be times where we have to bring people into a lab because we are testing something bigger that takes longer to run users through, but I think those sessions will be fewer and further between.

Finally, I would like to extend a huge Thank You to Joe and his staff @AJBombers! They really helped us out and that place is truly the best usability lab on the planet.

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Posted in Social Media, User Experience | 3 Comments »

Proper Deadlines

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

The ideal project would not have a deadline for my taste. I would love to have all the time in the world to design and develop a website nirvana that all users could navigate through effortlessly. This utopia, however, is unrealistic. First and foremost, the client would like to have a web presence sometime this century. Secondly, they have a budget and can’t afford the bottomless well of development a project like that would have.

The flip side to this is having a deadline before the entire scope of the project is realized and before proper expectations are set. These types of projects are far more dangerous than the scenario above. These types of projects are rife with problems.

What does one of these deadline first projects look like? Follow me kids… I’ll show you. (I promise no Oompa-Loompas or a trippy boat rides. Gene Wilder rocks by the way… wow – tangent – sorry.)

Most likely these projects start out with a client who has a great idea. They have thought a lot about this idea and have put a lot into the business plan to make this new idea come to life. Secondly, they have identified that they need a web presence, and because they are far from experts in this area, they come to you.

They go through their business plan at a high level with you and tell you some of the objectives they have for their website. You walk them through a very thorough questionnaire (put together by a very smart design company :) ) and get as many answers as you can to provide a few mock-ups and a high level cost estimate.

What’s that noise… sounds like a loose wheel. Anyway, the client flips over one of the designs you made and wants to start immediately. You are excited, you won the work and you are moving into development.

So you create an outline and calendar to make sure you have the proper time built in to do an Information Architecture (IA) study, a card sorting activity and a wireframe of the rest of the site so you have a better handle of the scope of the project. You also want to make sure this new site is usable and helps your new client achieve their business objectives.

Before you have the ability to share this outline and calendar with your client they come to you and tell you that they shared your designs with their marketing team and they started creating campaigns around the new site. Whoa… did you feel that shimmy? What is that noise?!?

You start asking the client to participate in some of the IA studies you want to conduct and they tell you that there is a lot of things moving right now and there might not be time to do any IA studies at this time. “We can always get to that later. Why don’t you start building out the home page so we can see what it looks like in a browser.”

You start constructing your home page and you get a message from your client… “Good news we got our booth graphics done! Did I forget to tell you we are going to a trade show in 30 days and we need the site done before we leave?” OMG the wheels just fell off. Hold on this is going to be a messy ride!

Well… choice time… do you swing the door open, jump, tuck, and roll? Or do you press on and try to help your new client land this thing? (for the purposes of this post we are going with option B)

Now you are staring at a deadline that is going to take every waking minute of your time to reach. In order to get some reality around this news you just received, you set up a meeting with the client to see where you can shave some scope. This first meeting is what I like to call the denial meeting.

Your client will tell you that it is no big deal; there should be plenty of time to get this done by the show. You make some suggestions on where they can cut some scope – they are reluctant to do it because the site needs to be next to perfect for the show. Again, they tell you not to worry about it. They are going to get you help with content and they have a plan where they can get more.

Do you smell that? It smells like something is burning. So you press on. The work becomes a grind. Curve balls are coming at you left and right. Instead of shrinking scope, your client tries to increase it… “Can we hook the site up to a Content Management System?” “How about some Flash that streams our mission statement video?”

The work you are doing is now taking twice as long as expected because you client keeps changing their mind as you make your way to the trade show date. You promise yourself that all the short cuts and hacks you needed to put in will get fixed after the show is over (not really believing that will happen). You get this website mess to a point of acceptability for your client and you push it live. It doesn’t really work the way you wanted it, the information flow is a bit slap-dash, and there are some errors that still linger.

But it’s out there in time for the show. Your client is more happy that the website is out there when they needed it than what the result of the site is. They spin it to their partners that there is going to be a lot of improvements coming. They pat you on the back and say that after the show they want to talk about the next phase of the site. With a wink they say that big things are coming.

This, my friends, is not that far from actual events a lot of us in this field have experienced. These fire drill type projects zap the life out of any good UX-designers/developers. It is vitally important that you communicate the importance of realistic and proper deadlines. Sometimes it is difficult to explain the amount of time it takes to do something right. A lot of times your clients won’t understand what it takes to build an online presence that is usable and friendly to their customers. They most likely will try to minimize your role and effort to get what they want sooner and cheaper. They don’t understand that “someone else has done it so it can’t be that hard; you just put it there like that” is easier said than done.

Our jobs in these situations is to explain, in terms they will understand, what it takes to build their awesome website. We need to show them how the process of our job works. We also need to show our clients why proper deadlines help them out as well. We need to communicate what there role is going to be in the development of their website. We need to show them what deliverables they have on their plates and how the timeliness of those deliverables affect our progress. If you can, show your client an example of what happens to projects with rushed deadlines. Show them the original mock-ups and the finished result. Explain all the corners that were cut how those shortcuts effect the performance of that site.

Before you get headlong into a project set up some realistic time lines. Use a calender to show when deliverables are needed and when milestones are going to be met. This way your client has a visual timeline. You have the ability to show them what happens to that timeline when new scope is introduced or when new deadlines are introduced.

In the end, your client may not like what you are saying at the time, but they will appreciate it in the long run. And if they don’t, maybe they aren’t the type of client you want to work for.

Posted in Clients, Design | No Comments »

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