Video by Variant Studios

As designers and developers, it is our responsibility to communicate effectively about our craft, to set expectations, and to manage the process. In this session, I'll talk about a few of the techniques we have found to be effective for working with clients -- while keeping our sanity mostly intact.

Just about all of us in the interactive field work with clients. Internal developers serve internal clients, agencies serve outside clients, and product creators serve customers. Clients are a normal part of the developer's life.

Yet almost every time I talk with other shops about working with clients, the conversation turns to horror stories. Scope creep, outrageous functionality requests, counter-intuitive design requirements, and endless feedback cycles are just a few of the common problems design and development teams face. At my company, we've definitely had our own fair share of client communication challenges.

As designers and developers, it is our responsibility to communicate effectively about our craft, to set expectations, and to manage the process. In this session, I'll talk about a few of the techniques we have found to be effective for working with clients -- while keeping our sanity mostly intact. There will be plenty of time for Q&A, and for sharing your own client communication experiences (good or bad).

Specifically, we'll cover:

• Effectively communicating your process
• Fixed-bid versus time and materials
• The importance of clearly establishing goals before presenting deliverables
• Keeping focus on the final product and experience, not the deliverables along the way
• Avoiding endless "dead documents" that have no life beyond project launch

Slides:

Working with Clients and Keeping Your Sanity (14.8MB PDF)