AbsoluteB.com

As the saying goes; “the customer is always right” and I believe that to a certain extent. Obviously in this line of work, we have to aim high in order to make the client happy when it comes to the projects they bestow upon us. I take a lot of pride in the websites that I design and build and when a client’s expectations are surpassed and when whatever they initially had in mind pales in comparison to the end result of my work, I feel a real sense of accomplishment. This week however, I experienced client intervention to an all new extreme! So much so in fact, that the website I had initially designed and built and was so proud of will unfortunately not be finding its way into my portfolio.

Before I go any further and get into it, I would like to share this link which I got from a Bonobos colleague which pretty much sums up my story, but in a much funnier and more graphical way. Check out How a web design goes straight to hell.

Anywho, so this project started about a month ago like any other web project. It started with analyzing the client’s wish list and specifications and the sketching out a of few ideas. With this particular site, there were many different sections required for short lists and for tiny pieces of information; all of which the client wanted. It was a little busy for my personal taste, but after a couple of concepts, I was actually really happy with what I had come up with, and so was the client apparently. So the design was approved and green lighted and the went into production.

This particular project has no CMS so content had to be provided by the client and copy and pasted into the framework (yes, this is the point where things start going wrong). The client wanted to put so much information into the various tiny little areas that the boxes were either too small or they were stretched. It totally destroyed the entire look and feel! Upon communicating this issue to the client, the content was edited and new content was sent back. However, not everything as we had hoped for; content was still too much and some of it was even more than before! But there wasn’t anything to be done about it anymore as this was the bare minimum the client was willing to accept because he felt that his potential customers were looking for pages and pages of info to read. So the design had to be tweaked/screwed up from the original.

The small 3 point list which was nice and spacious became a green box with a lot of lines of small, uninteresting text. The images with small, cool looking catch lines became a box full of information and the image became a multicolored border. An extra button here, more white space there… and so the list goes on. This past week alone I had spent a lot time making, not just changes to the site, but also to the freakin content that the client had provided!

So this brings me to my question; to what extent is client intervention okay? A colleague from my Atos days told me that the client pays us for our knowledge and expertise so they should shut up and butt out entirely. But I think that goes a little too far. Everyone wants to be able to provide a product that will make the client happy they chose you for the job, but what if what makes the client happy, is really ugly and just a bad idea? And what if even after you communicate that to the client, they still want to go ahead with their retarded idea? What do you do? Do you simply go ahead with it? When is it okay to tell the client that he just doesn’t have a clue and he knows jack about web design and that he should STFU?