by Sarah B. Nelson

As designers, we are often thought of—and think of ourselves—as vendors, offering design services. Sometimes an adversarial relationship develops, with clients giving orders and designers taking them (cursing all the while). Including clients in the design process can change this relationship, facilitating knowledge transfer, building trust, and fostering a sense of partnership.

“Including clients in the design process” may sound like death by a thousand paper cuts. I used to think that designing with clients was a really bad idea. I didn’t want them around me while I was “doing my work.” They just seemed to get in the way.

But as the design challenges I faced grew in complexity, I soon realized I truly needed the wisdom of the whole team—clients and all—to create a stellar experience. Furthermore, I’ve discovered that with practice, patience, and a healthy dose of planning, you can dramatically improve the quality of your work, the likelihood of its acceptance, and the integrity of its implementation.

Recently, our team took on a multi-channel design strategy project (phone, web, print) for a financial organization. We worked directly with a small client team—but that small team was connected to nearly 30 other people with a stake in the project. Our clients had deep domain knowledge and their experienced team of information architects, interaction designers, and business owners had come up with some great ideas over the years. Unfortunately, politics, bureaucracy, and endless negotiations had torpedoed, watered down, or otherwise compromised many of their ideas, and we had to remember that history as we considered how best to interact with the client.

Let’s say our team had tried a typical present-and-approve approach with this client. We would have interviewed stakeholders, presented our findings, and gotten buy-in on a specific direction. Along the way, we would have gone back to our studio, done some work, presented ideas at key points, sought more buy-in, and then progressed to the next step.

And with this client, we would have been dead in the water.

The buy-in process might have lasted forever. At each point, we would have had to persuade 30 people that our recommendation was a good one. Emotions, politics, and conflicting opinions would have arisen. Most likely, we would have been swamped with hundreds of small changes or had our ideas rejected outright.

Instead, we choreographed a series of structured work sessions that brought those 30 people directly into the design process. There, they could share ideas, debate openly, and air their concerns as we worked. Additionally, the hands-on experience gave them a new respect for our work.

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SARAH B. NELSON
Design Strategist of Adaptive Path

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