Minimizing Stress
As web designers, we’re often involved in projects where clients have difficulties making decisions. Sometimes, these difficulties can frustrate clients to the point of stalling projects. I have empathy for them; decisions are stressful.
At Visual Chutzpah, we think part of the design job is to eliminate frustration and stress before it happen. Certain design decisions are straightforward - color and typeface are part of our design expertise - and hopefully a good client will honor our recommendations. Other decisions aren’t quite so cut and dry.
Imagine a client with a list of 100 events, 15 board members, 50 products and 75 office photos. The simple question ‘What order do you want these in?’ could theoretically bring your project to a standstill while your client mulls over the possible permutations. Luckily, there’s a simple solution: Don’t ask. Instead, suggest. In our experience, most things have an inferred order built in.
Let’s take another look at the client’s assets.
- 100 events - This one is really obvious; events have dates. If the dates are in the future, descending order is a safe choice. Otherwise, use ascending order.
- 15 board members - Do yourself a favor and use the order the client provided. Doing otherwise would be a faux paux.
- 50 Products - This is the tricky one. If the products are for sale, suggest organizing them by price, number of sales or availability. If they’re not for sale, try alphabetical.
Look at that! We’ve eliminated three of the four decisions, leaving one. Just between us, that one is a duck. How do you order 75 office photos? The answer is simple: Don’t. What works for us is to randomize the order. Now, each time the client visits those photos, the order changes - much better than stressing through the nearly infinite number of arrangements of those photos.
So, we make all these decision and present them to the client. They, of course, still have the power to veto, but that seldom seems to happen. Another problem solved.
