Hjörtur Scheving
Interaksjonsdesigner, IXD
Is a web hero, day and night. Always trying to make the web a better place to live in. Just moved to Norway to work with the great people at IXD.
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There are so many websites made each day, some good and some bad. I know I have made sites that fall into both these categories; hopefully the good ones outweigh the bad ones. An awful lot of sites made each day look very similar, most of them I would describe as mediocre, they are not bad, but they are not good either.
How many projects have you started where you were going to make the best site ever? Something extraordinary? Something that stands out from the crowd? Then the end result was just one more site that you don’t even put in your portfolio.
It was the client!
I wish I could say that it was the fault of the clients, believe me I have tried that excuse however it just doesn’t hold up. Just to be clear, the clients are not all innocent, far from it, they have a big role in the way their sites end up.
The troubles with clients are that they look too much to their competitors; “What are they doing? How does their site look like? What does a site look like in my industry? I want something similar”. It is like they are scared to stand out. They don’t have the guts to try out new things. There is a reason why the clients came to us in the first place; there is a reason why they wanted to change their site in the first place, right? So why are they trying to steer the new site in the same direction as the old one?
It wasn’t me!
We as web professionals we let them get away with it, we often look at the competitors and go from there, instead of forming fresh ideas in our minds first. Most of us are stuck in a rut; we do the same each day, same type of header, same type of footer, same menu structure, etc. I have my favourite icon pack, favourite grid system, colours, etc. I got ready-made PSD templates that I reuse; buttons, patterns and other web elements. All to make me more productive, to make my life easier I guess.
We as web professionals are also lacking guts, we are scared to try new things, and we like to play it safe. Then on a good day we come up with a good idea, usually after reading or seeing something from web celebs like Nick La or Elliot Jay Stocks. We come up with something good, something different and we bring it full of excitement to the client. “Yeah, that is nice, but see how our competitor does it….maybe we should go in that direction”. I am sure you all have heard this, right?
Well what do we do? We go back to our computers, and change the wireframe or graphics, depending where we are in the process. We tone things down, change it to something safe; after all it is the client that is paying.
Well, yes it is the client that is paying, it is his/her site, but you should ask yourself one question: “Am I any good at what I do?” If the answer is yes then ask your client this; “Why did you come to me in the first place?”.
I guess the client came to you because you are the professional, right? The client came to you because you know what you are doing, so why are you not standing up to your client? Why are you not arguing your design, be it wireframe or graphic design? Why are you letting the client steer this into a mediocre site? By doing so you are digging you own grave, your client will not respect you; will think you are a lightweight professional. So even though you think you are doing the right thing at the time, in the long run you are hurting your credibility as a web professional and you will continue to be stuck in mediocrity.
What can I do?
My new years resolution is to stand my ground as a capable web professional, to defend my decisions and stand by them. If I get a car mechanic to fix my car, I don’t stand over him and tell them how to do their job, I know they are the experts.
However when it comes to the web then everyone is an expert. Of course this doesn’t mean that I will not listen to the clients when they come with their input! But the end decision should lie with me as an expert (in the perfect world). I respect my clients and expect respect back from them.
I hope you do the same, stand up and defend your decisions, don’t be afraid to try new things otherwise we all be stuck with mediocrity and no progress will be made.
So tell me what is your experience? Do you only make great sites? Or do you run into the same problems as I? Got any good advice maybe? (Du kan godt svare på norsk)
8 kommentarer til "Same again and again"
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Kåre Garnes, VictorSanchezBarrera, Hjörtur Scheving, Lars K Aasbrenn, Hjörtur Scheving and others. Hjörtur Scheving said: RT @cecilielin: Hjörtur Scheving sitt jomfruinnlegg på #kuttisme: Same again and again http://bit.ly/f5Ctdx Velkommen :) [...]
Time. Projects starting out as ‘the best designed site, ever’ fades over time, as new projects grabs your attention. We all know this, that’s why behind every designer portfolio lies 10-20 unfinished designs. In the end you grab a Behance profile or a WP template just to get your shit out there.
People don’t have a long attention span, and redo rather refine.
And what’s the best alternative, for the client that pays you: a mediocre execution that is known to work, or a far-fetched idea that turns out to be so ‘designed’ it only makes half sense for the designer himself?
Most people wont gamble their money.
That is a bit of a depressing attitude you have there Tor. I like to think we work in a creative industry. It scares me a bit to think that our industry might be giving up and becoming some sort of a factory industry where all we care about is to “get your shit out there” type of view.
If we only stick to things that are known to work then where would we be? You think Apple had this attitude when it made the iPhone? Or Jørn Utzon when he designed the Sidney Opera house?
I am not maybe talking about breaking all conventions, going that far that only the designer understands what he has done. Rather tweaking things that are already out there and don’t be scared to try something new. If we all just use what is out there that is “known to work” then we might be missing out on the things that work much better.
I consider it much more gamble for clients to spend their money on either creating same what they have today or create something that will just be same as every other site out there.
What’s a ‘creative industry’? People don’t take care in getting shit out there, but that’s what gets the job done.
How many clients have you had, comming to you and say ‘Yeah, I want you to make ten pixel perfect solutions, then trash nine of them – I want a great result that bad”, and want to you to follow this way of working¹. If you have, you’re lucky, I’ve never met or heard of any.
¹ – http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/publications/magazine/6/4/you_cant_innovate_like_apple
Well for me a “creative industry” is where we create new things… not just copy&paste.
“People don’t take care in getting shit out there, but that’s what gets the job done.”
Well Tor, I care and I know all my colleagues at IXD care, and so do many of the clients I have worked with! But of course not all… For me this attitude is like throwing in the towel, giving up. If this was like this in my everyday here at work then I would very quickly go and do something else like a florist or something.
By the way a good article you linked to there.
That’s reality for a lot of the web works you link to at the top of your article. They spot what seems to work for others. It’s only done to save time. Everybody is in a time crunch, especially if you’re making web apps.
Pulling the iPhone in as an example is far fetched, even if your client cares – they never want to pay you for a so thorough process as Apple. That was my point.
I’m in the business of web apps, as a product designer over at Keyteq. Creating something creative and new seldom the answer when making usable interfaces. I think evolution is a far better practice, refining and making things better, but still having a connection to past use.
I put a lot of care and love into my work, maybe even too much sometimes. Still, I know not everybody has the opportunity to do so. Calling people out without knowing the reasoning behind what you call copy and paste, is in my opinion wrong.
I put my work up to the ten listed here: http://designalized.com/ – and lately I’ve been researching for more principles to ‘check’ my work to.
Yeah, I think we are on the same page here. I am not talking about reinventing the web, I am talking about refining things, taking things a bit further. Sometimes we might fail but we will for sure learn something.
The iPhone comparison, might be far fetched, but this also goes for all design patterns we use today; accordions, tabs, sliders etc. These all came because someone tried new things or tweaked existing things, right?
So in the end I think we agree on many things, just different ways of putting it.
I checked out your site, many good principles there.
Det ligger vel litt i en (grafisk/web)-designers natur at man vil skape noe unik, hele tiden. Man ønsker å lage noe som står ut i mengden, og aller helst noe som andre designere vil anerkjenne. Og dette gjelder ikke bare designere, men alle kreative yrker.
En sak som kjennetegner webdesign er at våre kreasjoner varer bare 1-3 år så er de borte. Og med borte, så mener jeg borte. Hvis man lager trykksaker, så kan du kjøpe etpar ekstra kopier for å legge i arkivet, for å kunne vise sluttproduktet ved en senere anledning. Dette kan man ikke gjøre med nettsteder. Når nettstedet redesigner i løpet av etpar år så vil ditt design være borte, og kanskje glemt. Og du vil ikke ha en kopi av sluttproduktet. Du beholder sikkert skissene, og kanskje en klikkbar prototype, men begge disse er kun midlertidige steg i en kreativ prosess. De gir bare en indikasjon på hva sluttproduktet var.
Hvis man er pragmatiker så tar man konsekvensen av dette. På en annen side er jeg veldig enig med Hjortur om at vi må få opp den faglige stoltheten, og at vi må prøve å pushe visuelle-grenser og -konvensjoner. For det kommer vel ingen andre til å gjøre for oss?