How we decide what projects we take on

At O/M we’ve structured the company a bit differently from how creative agencies are often built. We made the decision early on as a company to keep our area of focus narrow, unusually narrow for a company like ours. There isn’t anything wrong with a creative firm doing many things at the same time — branding, product design, illustration, engineering, etc — but our philosophy has been to do less and do it better through intentional focus.

As a result of this focus, we’ve built a reputation for being a firm that delivers great product strategy and UX design. Recently, we’ve gone one level deeper in our area of focus to study inclusive design as a discipline so that we can realize our mission to build a world that is more beneficial and accessible for everyone through our work.

Part of what helps us maintain this focus is working hard to determine what projects and clients will be a good fit for our services and our unique approach to UX design. We built a set of qualifying guidelines to help us be consistent with this goal. This rubric isn’t intended to work without care or human interaction, but it is the place we start when determining whether to move forward with a potential project or not.

Below is an overview of how we think about qualifying projects, and while it isn’t perfect and isn’t intended to be applied to every creative business, we hope it helps spark ideas for how you might build a framework that works for you.

Values Alignment

Our primary project qualifier is whether we have values alignment with a client. It supersedes all other considerations. For instance, we prioritize work that would contribute to positive environmental impact or that would improve accessibility in a product for the people who need to use it. Conversely, we disqualify work that directly clashes with our values, like a project for a gun manufacturer, a company in the oil and gas industry, an organization with Anti-LGBTQIA+ and/or racist stances, or companies with ties to authoritarian regimes. We recently doubled down on this commitment by joining Clean Creatives, a collective of design professionals committed to refusing work from the fossil fuel industry.

Expertise Alignment

We only want to take on work that is a good fit for our areas of expertise, and we find it unethical to engage with clients when we aren’t absolutely confident in our ability to deliver value for them through our strengths. Unfortunately, this happens all too often in our industry, where the fear of not having enough work causes people to say yes to work that they aren’t sure they can competently deliver.

Saying yes to work that isn’t in our expertise-wheelhouse is also highly stressful for our team. We hire UX designers to do UX design, and we don’t change people’s job titles and responsibilities on the fly. Taking on a project that might stretch you into new areas that make sense for your people and the business based on the expertise you’re delivering your clients is ok, and often healthy. However, saying yes to work that is totally outside the expectations you set for your team members when you hired them can be a cruel bait and switch.

When we are adamant about keeping this qualifier a priority, we’re more likely to find clients that value our expertise, our people, and are supportive of our creative process.

Just Cause Alignment

In 2021, we spent time as a company reflecting on the impact we wanted to make in the world and the legacy we wanted to leave behind for future generations. The result of this work was the creation of our company’s Just Cause, a term coined by Simon Sinek in “The Infinite Game” meant to help people create a reason for doing work that goes beyond metrics and financials. Our Just Cause, which you can find on our site, is —

“We are committed to creating a world that is accessible and beneficial to all by using design as a tool for bettering people’s lives.”

One of the best ways for us to move our Just Cause forward is for us to select work based on that project’s ability for us to apply our growing toolbox of inclusive practices. This qualification point is highly-aligned with our first consideration point of “Values alignment” but places additional emphasis on inclusive design as an alignment we look for in a project or client.

When faced with two similar project opportunities that meet our first two qualifications, we select the project that has the greatest need for inclusive design impact, or we move forward with the client who values these principles more deeply.

Besides these first three alignment considerations, we try to consider a number of other potential factors when determining fit for a client or project. Again, these are meant to be points of conversation among the team rather than rigid questions with binary outcomes.

Other High Priority Qualifiers

Personal career path alignment

Our goal is to attract and select work that will be fulfilling to our design team and to assign specific projects based on an individual designer’s strengths, areas of opportunity, and desired growth path.

Budget alignment

In order to support our team’s ability to meet their financial goals, and for the firm to maintain long-term health, we need to select work that is able to pay our rates. We also created a pro-bono program to help when we want to work with a client but they are unable to afford our services.

Scheduling alignment

We can only take on work when we have the ability to do so on our schedule, and sometimes need to disqualify a project because it would overburden our team and impact the quality of the work.

Potential for future work with that client

We sometimes prioritize clients who have a product that is successful, or who have a new idea that is likely to provide human value and create market impact. Keeping a client is much less difficult than having to find a new one, especially if we’re being picky about who we want to work with.

Client pie percentage

Lastly, we are careful to not let any single client take over more than 30% of our business unless there are clear, strategic reasons for doing so, we’ve evaluated said risks, and have plans for mitigating them. There are good reasons for avoiding this common pitfall that we don’t have time to chat about here, but if you need a primer you can check out 2Bobs podcast here.

Outside the three most important project qualifiers — Values, Expertise, Just Cause — not every one of these points is evaluated for every project. Often there are other points we consider that are more situational, but this list is the rubric we come back to often.

After all, you are what you do, and we want what we do to be something we’re proud of.