Designers & perfect clients: the hide and seek game

Spoiler: You will not find an easy path to deal with a difficult client here. This is not a motivational text — it may be a little anti-motivational even. Let’s just talk about how designers tend to relate to their customers.

The year was 2009. Someone — and nope, it wasn’t my uncle — hired me for a freelance job. It was supposed to be a very fast and easy job, just a folder for a local store to advertise a sale. My fee: R$ 50 (equivalent to US$ 20 back in those days). The deadline: 2 days. I was a design student then, and I felt like a huge opportunity had just fallen onto my lap. I finally had the chance to show my true worth. I was so amazed with the fact that I could actually earn money from my chosen profession (after all my family drama about how I would starve as a designer), that I was oblivious to the fact that my client had totally dismissed my layout proposal. In fact, he treated me as a glorified monkey who could use the Illustrator — moreover making use of a colorful language.

If you are a designer, you no doubt have a very similar story to tell about your first paying client. You will probably also tell me that University didn’t prepare you for managing projects, people, business. Nobody told you that you would need to deal with all this, even if you were someone who simply wanted to do your job, enjoying the companionship of your computer and headphones.

Well, some might argue that being a designer includes understanding business and being able to empathize with clients and users. And on this digital product field, those qualities are even more noticeable. You can read more about it on this article about Guava’s Design Process and on this one about unicorns designers. You can find it everywhere — in books, articles and on the internet. Needless to say, I share this vision with them. My first client taught me that I should improve relationship skills to earn more money, and to leave me in a better state of mental health.

So, how has my mindset about this matter changed over time?

The Evolution

• Phase 1—OMG I have a client
• Phase 2 — At least I’m getting paid
• Phase 3 — Fuck that: I can pick my own clients
• Phase 4 — Making lemonade out of these lemons

Phase 1—OMG I have a client

In your first jobs, you must have felt very happy because things were going well and the first winds of freedom were blowing in your favor.

It’s almost the same feeling of when you fell in love when you were young and still inexperienced — when you only see positive attributes in someone and tend to ignore all the red flags that appear in the relationship.

The problems you find when you’re a beginner are almost abusive. The planning and timeframe are almost non-existent, so you end up facing sleepless nights — and of course, the payment is not good enough to do so; just like what happened with my first client. I used his timeframe, not mine. You might have noticed that you must be organized, because your client will not.

By the end of college, I was working for a software company and also as a freelancer. In either case I was responsible for communication with the client. I developed UX and UI deliverables and also developed the ultimate briefing form, the best contract templates for visual ID, website projects and software interfaces. I thought that would solve the project management problem. I felt proud of myself, even when I was not proud of my design work. Until I repeated that about 10 times. Until I wasn’t happy anymore.

Phase 2—At least I’m getting paid

After a few clients, maybe you begin to notice that some (or several) things tend to go wrong. Some clients have already muddled the ideals of your profession and you may even feel even slightly hurt by it. Many of my designer friends tend to focus on the bad points of the profession because of bad experiences with customers, frustrating work and the lack of recognition — “but at least I’m doing what I like and getting paid for it.”

At this point, I listed everything that did not work on a project and tried not to repeat it. But guess what, they happened again and again, no matter what I changed on my forms. The Recurring Problems List:

1. Difficulty of prioritizing tasks, they want everything at the same time
2. Too many people making decisions about the same thing, but they just can’t agree on requirements
3. They don’t accept my professional opinion about the problem at hand
4. They want to teach me my own job
5. The lack of commitment during the project, lack of reviews or feedback
6. They don’t want to pay the fair value for the service
7. They don’t want to pay for Design

These don’t necessarily happen all at the same time. But you just need one or two items to experience a bad costumer relationship. For instance, regarding the story I told above, it’s easy to identify points 3, 4 and 6.

I believe that this list applies to different areas, but when we talk about Design and software Development, these are the most recurring complaints that I hear.

These are complex problems, which can happen even if you already work with a very consolidated process.

And they are not easy to solve — I don’t even think they could be solved using a single rule.

The realization that you cannot handle so many problems at once can be very frustrating. This can be a critical phase of your career, and from what I’ve seen so far, there are 3 common paths:

Burnout

Person leaves the design area seeking better quality of life.

Profile definition

Possible abandonment of relationships with clients — becoming a professional with a hands-on profile. It works well for agencies and perhaps software factories, somewhere specialization is a feature.

Persistence

Still believe in a generalist profile, want to keep trying to make it work self-employed or somewhere as a generalist designer.

Phase 3—Fuck that: I can pick my own clients

After working with 2 or 3 different companies, I realized my strengths were not only related to the design exercise. I loved the challenge of dealing with customers and users and I was not ready to give up the challenge of uniting execution and management. So I kept trying — and I must say that I was lucky enough to be with companies that valued this type of profile.

After becoming aware of possible mistakes, I tended to idealize the perfect client — and made myself believe that I would only work with people who bring more benefits than headaches. I was wondering: what if we only accept jobs from perfect clients? Of course that thought comes together with many definitions about what a perfect client would be. Again, compiling the most recurring comments about this theme:

Respect

A client who brings an interesting challenge, respects our proposals, and pays well / on time

Reason

Somebody reasonable, who is clear on expectations

Team work

Someone who feels like part of the team, that participates in the process, that is dedicated to the product

Each topic has a strong rationale behind it. The first one is the pyramid basis. Basic needs. Not being taken seriously as a professional will not help you or your client, and could unleash every single trouble mentioned above. If someone is not taking your opinion seriously and you feel like you must impose your decisions or reinforce what you were contracted to do, maybe your client doesn’t see you as a partner or as someone able to solve his problem. I know it’s tempting to grab this kind of challenge, but please consider if it is an investment or a waste of your energy/time.

To find a reasonable person is hard, but that’s crucial for a transparent relationship. In a software development process, things will go wrong at some point and that’s nobody’s fault. Sounds simple, but it’s not easy to find clients who understand the flexible and changeable nature of digital product planning. When there’s a detour, it is important that all sides are prepared to deal with it.

Finally, at the top of the pyramid, is the rarest and most important behavior of all. If someone pays you to do a product/service, your client expects not to need to get involved in the process, and to have the solution ready after the time frame set in an initial planning. But good solutions are not unilateral and no one knows more about the customer problem than the customer. The constant exchange of information and feedback between who hires and who is hired is so important because it ensures a well-rounded product — and who knows, maybe a long and trusting relationship.

Phase 4—Making lemonade out of these lemons

Obviously, after being very picky about my jobs I found out there’s no such thing as the perfect client. If I expected them to check every single item in the list, my dad would be right about me starving as a designer. They’ll not always be good or bad and the key seems to be flexible enough to handle each one in a different way.

As UX designers, we should know there’s no such thing as linear behavior. Why should we expect our clients to be perfect and meet our expectations when the best experiences are projected for randomness?

That’s why I’m not able to give little drops of wisdom. Everything is different, everytime. What has worked for me recently is to be aware of the problems and be aware about my own limits.

My experience so far has shown me that I need to be careful about myself, above all else. That saying no is healthy. That plans can be changed. And I always try to remember that my client is no different from me: she’s just someone facing the same problems (or even worse) that I am.

Summing up, if a challenge looks exciting even when the client isn’t, just weigh the benefits and always have a planned outbound route. I’m sure you can find your own perfect way to handle your imperfect client.

Note

For the record: this text is based on my own experience. If you have tasted something different, I would be glad to have a chat about it sometime.