10 reasons why I and my UX was wrong … apparently.
Why pay the specialist to give an expert an opinion, when you’ve already decided what they should do? A sample of comments I and chums have heard from our esteemed clients and colleagues.
- “Can we have some more flare?”
How much ‘flare’ they wanted exactly wanted wasn’t clear. - “It’s all about making a good user experience. It’s all about the users” … <time passes> … “We haven’t got time to get the users involved … or do the research.”
The danger of not starting with clear requirements … or briefing … or an understanding of what the project is trying to achieve, for that matter. - “We need more features” (thanks to Harry Harold for this)
Great – let’s get a bag of features and poor them in. - “It’s all got to be instantly accessible from the home page” … <time passes> … “we need to move this off the home page.”
The danger of too many amends, leading you away from the initial aims of the project. - “These wireframes … can we have some colour … and the logo … and some pictures …(etc)”
No. Never. Your desire for visual impact will instantly lead the conversation away from “Does this work?” to “Are you sure that’s our corporate blue?” - (After a site was launched which was known to be confusing and broken) “The users are frustrated and complaining. But hey, now we’re working on the second version they feel involved!” (Thanks Simona)
Let’s just not tell them, eh? - “I don’t care what your research says … THIS is how it should be laid out.”
Engineering Quality Manager deciding that HIS placing of the search box was right, despite everybody else’s being in the opposite and same place. - “But I’ve already shown it to the Directors and they liked all the clocks.”
- Client Director: “Why have you done THIS!?!” Me: “Because you didn’t like what I’d done and told me do THIS instead”. Client Director: “We can’t show THIS to the client!!!” Me: “Hmmm.”
- Developer: “You can earn your day rate doing your little wireframes but we’ll do what we want anyway” (thanks to Fielding for this).
Glad to see teams working together in a spirit of collaboration and understanding.
Unless those pesky clients have dabbled with Photoshop and are asking for more lens flare (god help us all), I think you mean creative “flair”. Aside from that, great list!
Hi Vicky – this was actually a remark on a wireframe. Not having any access to the client on this gig, I don’t think the Account manager had really explained what my (or any) wireframes were really about.
Seeing this list makes me want to quit my job! I have experienced all of them, but I consciously ban them from my memory after each project, otherwise I don’t have the motivation to start a new one. Aaaaarrrggghhhh.. Now I have to eat lots of chocolate to get better!
RE: – Point 1: Just received a ‘brief’ from business intelligence company that says that they want the design to be “intelligent and fun”…”maybe with all our staff portrayed as Wii characters…..” FML It never gets any better does it