Having worked remotely as a User Experience Researcher and Designer for the last 5 years, I’ve had clients that have been able to utilize me to my best abilities, push me to improve and even increase my own standards. I’ve also also had clients that have barely given me the opportunity to show what I’m capable of. This post will talk about how not to be the latter client.
Be strict with your business goals, but flexible in your design approach
Design is a tool to reach a business goal. Some clients want the designers to literally be anyone who can use Sketch or Adobe XD or Figma or whatever other tool, because the client just doesn’t have time to download it and click around. I avoid these clients at all costs. Figma, or InVision or Adobe XD are not skills, they’re tools like a pencil, designed to communicate ideas. The ideas that are being communicated is what’s important. A UX/UI Designer or UX Researcher is someone who solves business problems by solving design problems through making software easier to use and more intuitive. It is their job to say yes to your business goal and how your product vision will help you achieve it. It is also their job to question how you want to arrive there in the design implementation and present alternative, more intuitive solutions, solutions that they’ve seen result in happier user experiences dozens of times before, from their other work.
Set aside time to regularly communicate with the consultant
A great freelancer is mindful of their client’s limited time and aggregates all of their questions, concerns and latest designs for a 1 hour meeting where everything can be addressed rapid-fire, which might lead to a request for side meetings about specific things that went unanswered and require other team members. But sometimes it’s really hard for the freelancer to get this 1 hour meeting in the first place. Obviously the frequency varies for each project, but in my experience 1 to 2 hours per week for a 20-40 hour engagement with the right stakeholders in the client company is all it takes, that is after a project or design sprint has kicked off. The design process is very iterative and requires client feedback, from the right stakeholders. The right stakeholders vary with each client and project, but typically consist of industry experts within the company (for B2B or enterprise design), the CTO, or Product Owners. Anyone who can say things such as:
-“How will this design address this other use case that we now realize is super important.”
-”We previously had a similar design for this specific piece, and found that it decreased user engagement because of x, y and z.”
-”It’s really important to also do user interviews with this other demographic.”
After the meetings, the designer should have enough direction to do a bunch of work until questions or requirement for feedback on new designs or new research starts to pile up until they’re blocked and literally cannot continue to work until they get the answers they need from the client.
In the beginning of a project or sprint, this meeting time requirement is much higher because at this discovery stage the scope is being set for the design. There should be discussion about what problems are being solved, what the design goals are, why the designer was even hired and how all of this achieves the business goals. A good designer will always push back on requirements and challenge the client’s ideas, which also adds to the time requirement.