What it feels like to be a client
By the way, I’m getting married next month. That means hiring people to do things I don’t know how to do. Like make a wedding cake, for example.
If I knew what I wanted in a cake, I’d probably make it myself. Unfortunately, I don’t know anything about cake. I don’t know what to expect, or anticipate. I don’t even know what’s easy or difficult. So when David Fletcher of Blu Boy Chocolate Cafe & Cakery asked me what I want in a cake, the natural response was: “Uhhhhhhhhh… I don’t know.”
And then it clicked…
Suddenly, I felt a lot of sympathy toward my web design clients. The fact is, I’m a design geek – of the web variety. It’s fun for me to think about usability, information design, semantic markup – before I get carried away, my point here is my clients aren’t the kind of people who think all that is fun. Things that are obvious to me are alien to them.
Just like cake is alien to me.
Design as diplomacy
Being in the client’s shoes has given me a lot of time to think about the relationship between designer and client. I’ve experienced, first-hand, the way a designer can also be a diplomat: Introducing a client to a foreign culture – respecting the fact that two worlds are colliding. I know it sounds obvious to seasoned designers, but when I consider the stereotypes about computer geeks eschewing social skills for nerdy elitism, I begin to wonder if diplomacy is, perhaps, one of the most undervalued skills in web design.
A tip of the hat
I’m grateful to have had the chance to meet with the guy making our wedding cake. Everything I’ve heard about Blu Boy in our town of Bloomington, Indiana, is so positive, it sounds as hyperbolic as so many political speeches we’ve heard at Presidential campaign conventions this year. But after Fletcher acted as my diplomat – introducing me to the alien world of wedding cakes – I am firmly convinced Blu Boy’s reputation is rightly earned.