“Can you just prototype it first, then I’ll decide what I want?”

Working with clients often gets to the frustration point where it’s simply that they want nothing to do with learning about what UX is or does; they just want results, results, and results. As long as their requirements are met, they don’t care about the journey but rather the end state of what a design should look like. It’s not an uncommon expectation, especially if teams are pressured to meet deadlines and certain financials, you know, business goals.

There is a point where a designer can be at a loss for where to even start the design process, especially if there is no data attached behind it. Surely, one can go wild and come up with something and create something magical and beautiful and wonderful and awesome, but what meaning is there if it’s just one person’s opinion? Certainly it can look good, but if it’s not functional (or even technically feasible to implement), how can you measure if it will be applicable for your users?

In this particular instance, I was at a crossroad because I wasn’t clear on even what the client wanted (if only I could jump into her brain to see what she was actually talking about)…so it led me to create a lot of random mockups (also note that having a LOT of options is NOT good) of what I interpreted. Long story short, the time that could have been spent gathering some user research to develop the product probably weighed out equally to the time I had to iterate and communicate back and forth with the client to finally choose something. Here’s this infamous meme to sum it all up: