How many design options do you show?
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Posted under: Design, Business
Last week on Boagworld, Paul Boag interviewed Andy Budd from Clear Left, a well-respected web design agency in England.
Andy commented on how they do things differently than many agencies in that they only offer one design to clients. You can read the interview transcript or download the podcast (see show 101)
Essentially his points were as follows, regarding presenting multiple design options:
1) Lowers value for the client.
Doing two or three times the amount of work necessary and the client only get half or a third of the value, they get to pick one of those three designs. They are essentially paying for work they’re not using. I don’t go to a restaurant and purchase three meals, knowing I will only eat one.
2) Clients make wrong choices.
No offense to clients, but they usually pick the option that’s least on strategy due to personal opinion. Is that their fault? They’re paying us to tell them what their best option is, are they not? If I go to a lawyer, and he presents me with three completely different options, I want to know what he thinks is the best option, after all - he’s the expert.
Usually a designer will spend more time on one design than another and therefore that typically is the design that is closest in line with the clients goals. Clients, if given the choice will usually try to blend elements of two or three choices into one concept to feel they are getting value - which results in a mish-mashed design, which is less in line with their goals than the one design that had more thought put into it.
3) Design becomes less about problem solving and more of a beauty contest.
As to whether multiple designers should work on different designs for one client, Andy says that you’re using more internal resources to inevitably produce one design for the client. Again, the client is paying the firm for their design expertise. So instead of presenting the firms professional opinion, they’re letting clients pick what they feel works, and it usually is picked based on personal appeal (I have those colours in my living room), rather than a design that will work for the target. This is not how we want them evaluating our design.
4) Lowers value for the firm.
Designing two or three options is counter productive in that you’re spending time and money on designs that are never used, essentially wasting that time which could have been used on other things, and at the same time, spending effort on designs that will be thrown in the garbage in the end anyway.
Keep in mind, we’re talking primarily about web design here. In many cases it makes sense to present multiple options for things like logos and ad campaigns, as they are usually higher level concepts that attack a problem from multiple angles, and they are generally quicker and easier to present in concept form (not execution). Web design, and publication design for that matter, is more about information architecture and requires much detailed problem solving. It is difficult to completely start from scratch all over again once you’ve worked through the problem the first time. Sure you can change a palette or adjust a font, but complete restructuring of information is a lot to ask once you’ve solved it the first time.
This is a subject I’ve thought about for a while, and am more convinced of the benefits of only showing one option the more it comes up. What are your thoughts?
