Design Decisions vs. Audience Considerations : Comments
May 20, 2008
Comments
“after all they are paying”
I’ve walked a fine line with this one. I find the most challenging aspect of designing is to convince the client to go against a bad design decision.
You would think that since they’re paying, clients would want to get your input on how to best communicate – either with content, design, or whatever – to their audience. Yet that is not always the case.
Odd, isn’t it?
Everyone wants to at least appear to be the chef in their own kitchen. That said, the hardest thing is to convince clients that food that looks good may not actually taste good.
I could go on but that may stretch this metaphor beyond rational bounds.
Congratulations Robin on this fine article! I must admit, I haven’t ready anything written by you before, but if it is more of this, then that is great!
It has been awhile since an article on Digital-Web has moved me to leave feedback, not because those articles were bad, but just that they were maybe covering old ground – topics that were already discussed elsewhere on the web. What I like most about this article is that addresses something really important for designers (which we sadly don’t see discussed nearly enough!)
This article should be read by everyone in web design!!
I really like this article! Very useful, and with ideas I hope to utilise with our more involved clients. particularly the action items and regular content areas.
One thing, your wireframe seems to leave out an area for a menu of links. is this page meant to be essentially a one-pager? Are all visitors expected to follow a linear path through the site, or might someone benefit from a menu of the sections of the site?
Ali- I’m sorry I didn’t catch your comment sooner.
Actually the left side is the navigation which is chunked according to type. You’ll see, for instance, “Learn nav” in the left top position. That area would contain the navigation which would educate about our fictional candidate i.e. issues bio etc. The areas below correspond to navigation areas for other types of content. Since this is a wireframe intending to show prominence and position of items I don’t list the actual links at this point.
Robin
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