How to Explain the Client’s Value of a Good Design Process

How Often Your Clients Tear Down Your Offer Ignoring Proper Research, Tests, Strategy? 🤔

Courtesy of @tomkoszyk
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It frequently happened to me 🤷‍♂️
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But the truth is that our clients tend to cut those parts of the process because they don’t understand their value.
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If you explain it to them, give examples, show adequate case studies, they often change their minds!
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We need to remember that our clients are not trained designers 🤫
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It’s our role, as designers, to guide and educate them.
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It’s a part of the service ❗
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So next time when you hear something like «We don’t need a strategy» try to use a few of the methods I explained in this post.
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Chances are, you’ll end up landing a sweet deal 😀
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And I’m curious, what are the best phrases you heard from your clients?
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My absolute favorite goes like:
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We don’t believe in design thinking, we believe in design doing».
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Your turn! 🤘

Or something like…

We don’t need to test it, my nephew knows about design…

Or at least

We don’t need a strategy. We already have a brief…

And then…

You received the brief.

Consisted of ten lines of text. It goes more or less like this:

• Registration
• Login
• Dashboard
• etc…

The truth is…

It’s not your client’s fault.

Neither is she/he the client from hell.

At the end of the day

You need to remember…

It is our responsibility, as designers, to educate our clients and explain to them the value of a good design process.

How to do that?

Explain, give examples.

Talk to your client with a language that she understands. Talk about the value. Be precise, honest, and confident.

• Research & tests are not an additional investment. Those activities help to minimise chances of failure, mistake and thus, save money.
• We all perceive the world subjectively. only proper research & tests allow us to get an objective overview.

How to do that?

Show studies & reports.

There are multiple studies that shows that companies that invest in design develop much faster than their counterparts.

How to do that?

Give a glimps

Invest a bit of your time and try some guerilla research/testing methods.

• Test an interface on your friends
• Look for adequate reports on the web
• Talk to your friends with similar problems that your client is trying to solve with her product

Bonus — tools that may be useful:

Crello — the simplest online image editor. A simple but powerful tool to create awesome designs for any social media format — posts, covers, graphics, and posters using the best software on the web. It’s easy! A lot of animated designs.
Designmodo — a timesaving tool that helps create websites and email builders designed for developers, designers, marketers, and non-tech users.
Flowkit — allows designers to create frighteningly fast user flows within Sketch and Figma.
Integromat — is a powerful automation tool that connects your apps and services to work smarter, not harder.
Manychat — visual bot builder for Facebook Messenger with broadcasts, analytics, scheduled posting and many other features.
Miro — is the online collaborative whiteboard platform that enables teams work effectively together.

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