What if you worked for your client's customers?
A week ago I was thinking about the whole designer-client relationship and ways that relationship can produce a successful or failed redesign. I was thinking about e-commerce, informational and blogging sites that have a large "customer" base, whether it means buying products or just accessing the content. Then I wondered, what would it be like to do a redesign for a client like this, and instead of sitting down and talking to the client, sit down with the customers and do the redesign based on what they want. What if the customer told me where they wanted the logo, navigation, content, etc. to go. What if they picked the colors? What if they decided how to lay out the forms?
I don't know how often such a thing happens, but the typical design process is that you talk to the client, find out what they want, show them some mockups, get them approved, implement a beta site, and then do user testing with potential "customers" who give recommendations that may or may not be used. It's a designer-client process every step of the way, and when the client knows what their customers want, that's fine. But if the client doesn't know what is best for their customers, then it's clear that there is no way the designer can guarantee the result will please the customers. And unhappy customers is a bad thing.
Now it's obviously impossible to please every customer, ever, but it's worth trying to please customers rather than just pleasing the client… at least if the client understands the value of it. I can even think of an example of working with customers in action. When Bryan was working on redesigning the Wordpress "publish new post" admin page, he used his blog to talk to the customers (in this case, Wordpress users) at his post "Wordpress YWMC: The Post Screen." All the input was varied and hard to satisfy, but it was clearly more valuable than anything the client (in this case, Automattic) could have come up with. I can also think of a time when working with customers wasn't followed and should have been: when Techcrunch was redesigned this year, it was clear that the problems with the redesign were the result of the client making all the decisions and ignoring his customers' needs. Mike has an explanation and examples of all the negative feedback over at "Techcrunch Redesigns, The Emperor Has No Clothes."
I think it would be really cool if, when starting with a client, he/she sent me the contact info a few customers and left the work up to me until the design was done. It would be a bit more difficult to field a group of people instead of just one, but the design process would be like user-testing from the start, and just in implementing the first draft I would know that I have already satisfied customers to some extent. I don't know if such a thing could ever happen, but I would definitely like to hear if it has.
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Interesting thoughts. In actuality our goal should always be to "work for our clients customers". I think this is possibly going to be something I actually implement in my work. I won't necessarily cut the client out, but I think showing that interest in their customers also shows the client your interest in them. Not to mention it is a great way to set yourself apart from other design firms in the area.
Plus, that extra time spent talking to the customers/users in the beginning could save some revision time in the user-testing phase.
There is where I consider myself lucky at times. I work within an IT Dept of a large finance company and our clients are the business analysts and their customers are other employees. So we have easy access to the end user. We run prototypes by them during user studies. Let me tell you it is very convenient, as opposed to designing public sites or for clients whose customers are not clearly defined or easy to categorize.
I think this is a really interesting idea. I wrote a post on Mashing up the design process and I think this concept of user testing and analysis would work. Why not get the users involved as early as possible. I am sure this will solve a lot of redesign work later on. But more importantly make a site that suits the user’s wants, needs and desires.
James: It wouldn't even be too hard to do this with a redesign. A designer could ask their client for permission to put a form on their current website asking users for specific feedback on the current design and things they would like to see changed. It could be very informative for both the designer and the client, and it would allow the designer to get acquainted with the customer base right away.