The first step in our research (also known as the discovery phase) is to get to know our client as best as possible. The client is the be-all and end-all. So far, we only know about them what they mentioned during the first meeting or what we were able to glean from perusing their website or other available resources. But we should learn about them as much as possible. What is the company’s history, what drove the founders and what priorities did they have, what is the company’s current outlook and direction, its long-term plans, trends, and so on.
Is our client a traditional company of many years, or rather a modern start-up? Is it a business, a charity, an organization, or an institution? A small, medium, or large enterprise? Is its way of doing business and organization tried and tested, or is it somehow unusual? Was it originally a garage start-up that has developed into an ambitious corporation over the years? Is it a garage start-up that has not grown yet? Is it the owners’ labour of love, a family business, or rather an impersonal corporation? Is it a regional company with no significant ambitions outside of its local area, or is it a subsidiary of a multinational corporate structure? Is it too timid in its presentation, or is it perhaps overly ambitious? Is it extensive, or intensive – in other words, geared toward rapid growth and maximal expansion, or is it building solid foundations and a loyal, stable client base? Does it want to stay true to its principles and traditions, or is it planning an update of its style and customs? Only a little bit, in some areas, or willing to undergo substantial changes too?
“A policeman who wants to successfully find a murderer must first get to know his victim’s personality thoroughly.” – Inspector Maigret
The list of questions requiring answers you can come up with is never-ending. But they should all share a unifying theme, and lead us toward the primary and defining parameter that we need to know with as much precision as possible in order to do our job well, which is crucial for achieving a functional result: the client’s goals, interests, and intentions. As we keep repeating on this blog, our goal is to create the optimal link between the above and the users’ needs, and therefore the above are one side of the equation we are about to solve. And it is vitally important for this input to be as precise as possible: a detailed and accurate solution to an erroneously composed equation gives a detailed and accurate result – which is completely incorrect.
This is the reason why we must try to define and write down the first part of our project specifications as accurately as possible. We must leave these specifications open for the entire period we work on the job, because we will keep updating them with newly discovered facts, and unless it is already too late, keep using them to modify and amend our design until the end. Even a seemingly small detail that we only uncover in the implementation stage, provided that we are able to reflect it in the end product, can end up getting an impressive reaction. Of course, every designer learns through years of experience how to evaluate the importance of each piece of input information, and will take responsibility for making a decision on whether to include it in the design, and if yes then to what extent. To start with, though, a simple piece of advice should do: No detail should be underestimated or ignored.
As a minimum, we should always go through our research and defining the client’s goals and interests at least twice. The first time at the very beginning, to create specifications for our design, and the second time once a design has been created, in order to check and verify its correctness. The same way that in mathematics a solution of an equation requires verification, in design it is equally important to verify again after making each design that it did not “derail” from the set out specifications, whether everything we gradually thought up actually still corresponds with the anticipated goals and interests of the client. We will elaborate on this “equation verification” in a separate post.
Step 1 of every design job must always be: What should the end product give to the client?
If we are under the impression that we know the client well enough to dare to define their primary and secondary goals and interests, let’s tentatively make a list of those, and try to order them by importance. We must evaluate what is really crucial, and what is marginal for the client in question. This list does not have to be definitive; we will keep working on it. Then we can put the draft aside for a moment, and focus on the other side of the equation: the user.
