Design perspective: Collect design leads and collect customer information

The following scenarios are still ubiquitous in our design services today:

Customer: "Please help me design a website!" ”
Designer: "OK, please give me design requirements and project plan." ”
Customer: "We need a more stylish website." ”
Designer: "I'm not talking about style, it's about your information and plans." ”
Customer: "Oh, we do not have any information, do you want our company logo?" ”
Designer: "I mean you do the purpose of the site, budget, analysis, etc." ”
Customer: "This information is not oh, you are not a designer, you can help us design?" ”
Designer: "...".

Yes, this impoverished is not a simple contradiction of supply and demand, but a real problem. Most of the cooperation between the client and the designer is in a tense state, on the one hand, customers can not accurately express the inner quality of the design requirements, and will require documentation, data, on the one hand, the designer is always very passive "waiting" information, "waiting for" the demand, "waiting" proposal, "wait" analysis ....

Designers as a service work + creative work of the post, we occasionally ignore the service part, from contact with the customer's first start, our service has actually begun. And in the face of this "embarrassing demand" situation, if you want to do better, designers should be proactive attitude to obtain demand, mining demand, fixed demand.

People often ask: "If the customer does not even give me the basic information, how can I start the design?" "In fact, some things through observation, search, collation, analysis, we can find a lot of ourselves, to see how the specific how to do:

Collect design Clues

As a project partner (or the beginning of a product development in a company), there are two things that designers should start doing right away: How to search for clues about design, and second, collect customer information. First, let's start with a clue about the design.

The clue to the design is not that you collect other people's good works, that is the creative reserve, you even download tens of thousands of pictures, it is also someone else's work, to your help is only to appreciate or look for inspiration, more to see other people's works more role is to look for similar products between the quality difference, if the luck is better, You can also find common ground in these designs, which form what the product should look like. The clue to the design is: to determine which part of the design process should start from, and in what direction .

You may have heard your client say, "It's pretty, but it's not the right direction, that's not what we want." ", this error appears in addition to your communication skills have problems, more is the design at the beginning of the time did not take into account the design clue things-you put creative those" bright spot "as a clue, thinking that simple ideas will bring customers recognition.

In fact, before the start of the design process, the collection of clues can be determined by the nature of the product , that is, to find out what the customer wants is a thing, such as customers only need a logo design, you should consider the scope of the product, the size of the company, operating mode, and the application of the sample Instead of telling customers, this logo design can refer to Microsoft, because you are doing it .... Most of the customers in the style is actually no concept, and you put the design process before, and finally give countless changes to the foreshadowing, because the next customer has been considering: "Why your design out of the logo are not like Microsoft's?" ”

Secondly, the design of the budget ratio is also an important reference direction, the customer is willing to spend how much money to design how much content, the relationship between these content, this is what we need to consider. For example, customers want to do a set of promotional pictures, and then revised the site, and finally unified to the image of the store, you may be a person (a company) is not to do, this time the ordinary approach is to recruit two-level outsourcing-but how do you control the source? The control of this design process takes precedence, otherwise there will be delays and even projects. Different design budgets determine your printing costs, the number of versions of your site, the difficulty of background development, the integrity of your user experience design and testing, and the extra flexibility to support your "sudden inspiration".

Then, this design should serve which users become the most important part, as a designer you also need to understand the market, if a design knows not to do, it will lead to the final project failure, perhaps your design fee is received, but the customer has left you forever. "User-centric" is actually a reminder to designers that any product you design should be useful and able to solve certain problems. Design can not be a vase, it always has broken day. Research users and what products they are using, these "perhaps successful" products are the original clues to your design.

Finally, designers need to understand the cause and consequences of the project , you do not think that you are the first design of the project to open a bud? Some projects are subcontracted by others, some are bad "uncompleted buildings", some are because of leadership mobility, and some more likely because of the price of the previous designer to collapse (but the good thing is that the idea of the deception). You polish your eyes in order to put yourself in a safe position, the time to brain out of the brain, the effort to contribute, remember to adjust the quotation and design time is good. Otherwise, your design direction will be one wrong again, remember: the nature of the project when there is doubt, be sure to ask directly, do not be coy embarrassed, customers will not be polite with you.

Collect Customer Information

On the collection of customer data, mainly for the side to supplement the above design clues, because different customer situation also partly determines the design clues of the accuracy and authenticity.

company Situation , if you can visit the customer's company, you may be able to understand the size of the company, operating conditions, as well as profitability, the quality of the company's personnel, the boss to deal with the problem, whether they indulge in meetings, the company's sweeping aunt to clean up the staff's desktop- Most of the details show a company's attitude towards products and his customers. Yes, the customer's business card also has a lot of information, such as the title of the person with whom you discuss the project, the company telephone, fax, mailbox suffix, and so on, the profit is infinite.

The basic features of a company determine their requirements for design, and the sincerity of design cooperation, from the mastery of corporate information, you can also understand the boss's culture, the product's basic style-this information for you in the presentation of the proposal process is quite helpful.

Customer Preferences , customer tastes need to be obtained through conversation and mail, in the free time of project exchange, you can learn from your personal life, hobbies and people to learn about the customer's preferences, this is actually the same as you do in user research, but only a slightly different purpose. Regarding the customer's preference, may tell you the customer to the design subjective appraisal intensity, if too strong customer, perhaps you should be cautious in the visual design time, if is more willing to try the visual experiment, you should have the bolder and the astonishing idea.

Customers ' preferences in life, and personal taste determines that he is looking for you to do the original intention of design, unless you are the industry pacesetter, have a beautiful title and experience, otherwise cater to customer preferences is one of the work you must-it will effectively save the design time, reduce the number of revisions to design manuscripts.

Design Evaluation , it is important to know in advance how the client is to conduct the design review and who will ultimately be responsible for the results of the review. In my celestial, the life and death of the design plan is not because of the quality, but because of "situation", connections and malicious competition is flooded among them. Evaluation means and ways, always bring a lot of objective factors, including people and people to get along, price, rebate, leading relatives, process, the last is the quality of design. Because few designers can say clearly the value of design and "Why do it", standards are easy to control on the one who has the power to judge. I mean, in addition to the designer's own initiative and resourcefulness, you should at least know that if you really want to give kickbacks, you should also give the right person.