Should designers be included in client meetings?

Yes! They bloody well should & so should developers.

Paul McKay
Jul 21, 2017 · 4 min read

A potential new client has picked the agency you work for as a real contender to design and develop their revolutionary new idea which will make them the next Mark Zuckerberg (Okay, so they might not know who Mark Zuckerberg is but you get the picture).

The meeting room gets booked, the client comes in and your Directors, Project Managers, and basically anyone that has a fancy job title all grab their coffees, a plate full of biscuits and disappear for hours on end to tell the client how only your company can make their product idea a reality.

A few days go by and finally, a brief gets placed on your desk and whilst looking through it, thoughts such as “How the hell are am I going to do this?” or “You told them we can do what? You do realise that technology doesn’t exist yet?” come into your head with the realisation this new project is going to be yet another nightmare.

Sound familiar?

Although times have changed and I now run my own creative business designing and building websites and apps for some awesome clients with Steve, I feel this situation is still all too familiar in some companies. I feel it’s up to us as an industry to start making a change.

Putting my hands up, I can confess to not knowing exactly what you would say to management to try and persuade them to let you in on the next meeting. However, in assembling a list of pros and cons for this article I struggled to think of many negatives.

Pros

  • The client can receive reliable creative input from the offset.
  • A meeting can become a brainstorming session, reducing the requirement for unnecessary back and forth communication with the client to try and understand their requirements.
  • The element of excitement and enthusiasm can start to be shared between client and creative/developer alike.
  • The ability to discuss any potential flaws with the product can be discussed and evolved to better strengthen the idea and product in question.
  • The client can come away from the meeting fully satisfied that their thoughts and ideas have been properly digested. Which in turn eliminates the possibility of producing something that doesn’t match the clients requirements. This further reduces the time spent in the design/prototype phase allowing for a faster turnaround of the product.
  • Allows juniors to learn and understand what it’s like to meet with a client when they might not have had past experience. This then allows the designer and/or developer to also broaden their communication and confidence skills and grow as an individual.

Cons

  • If you’re a small team, with only a few designers and/or developers, pulling them into every meeting would slow production.
  • The client might have a perception into who they should be talking to and might not take kindly to anyone other than Directors or Managers being involved. (Would you really want to take this kind of client on?)
  • Discussions of project cost may be raised within a meeting and not all companies or clients are happy to be transparent with the entire team.
  • In some instances, designers and/or developers might not be comfortable facing a client.

Now I’m not saying that all creative companies follow this structure and I realise that quite a few studio owners come from a creative background reducing the requirement for a designer or developer to be in a meeting. Yet this situation does happen, and it often makes me wonder whether or not companies respect and ultimately trust their workforce.

Trust starts with trustworthy leadership. It must be built into the corporate culture. Barbara Brooks Kimmel.

Finishing up.

Contrary to this, I roughly estimate the briefs given to me without meeting the client took around 15–25% longer to complete. It took longer to understand the requirements of the clients brief. An element of frustration from both parties became apparent and often resulted in 3+ versions of a design being produced before the direction was remotely near to being signed off.

In conclusion, I see no apparent reason to why we should continue to be left out at these critical phases of the project. Working as a team, I believe studios could see an increased turnover speed with projects and improvement in client/team satisfaction.


Please be aware that this article has been written as an opinion based on personal past experiences. As with the majority of my articles it’s designed to spark a conversation. If you have your own thoughts then I’d love to hear it in the comments below or tweet me.

CocoonDev

We build websites and mobile apps.

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Paul McKay

Written by

Web & App Designer. One-half of @cocoondev. Dribbbler. http://dribbble.com/paul_mckay Snowboarder. Man.

CocoonDev

CocoonDev

We build websites and mobile apps.

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