UXmatters has published 4 editions of the column Client Matters.
Not long after I went independent, a friend who works at a well-known global advertising agency asked if I would be interested in helping out on a high-profile Web site redesign project. I was pretty stoked. He suggested I come in to meet his team. After meeting with the lead developer and project manager, I was told they wanted to bring me on. All I had to do was to meet the creative director.
When he finally got a chance to sit down with me, the first thing he asked was something I wasn’t prepared for: “Can I see your portfolio?”
I hadn’t brought one. “I can give you the URL,” I said. We weren’t near a computer.
His glassy response: “I’m not sure what we have to discuss if I can’t see your work.” And with that he asked that we reschedule for a time when I could come back with my book. Then he left. Read More
Now that you’ve convinced a client they want to work with you, it’s up to you to define the terms of your working agreement. Your goal in the contract negotiation process is not to determine the best price, but to most accurately define the scope of your project. This is possibly the most critical factor in the success of your project, and it’s something most consultants completely fail to follow through on.
A Statement of Work (SOW) formally defines the scope of the activities and deliverables for a project. BusinessDictionary.com defines scope as the “chronological division of work to be performed under a contract or subcontract in the completion of a project.”
Some clients have a very specific chunk of work in mind, while others just know they need help. In either scenario, use your expertise to determine the appropriate amount of work to tackle, according to several key variables: needs, resources, location, schedule, and budget. Read More
Last August, I took the leap into independent consulting after four years of full-time jobs and three years of freelancing on the side. While I thought I was prepared for what lay ahead, I’ve learned many things the hard way in the past year. In my new UXmatters column, Client Matters, I’ll try to give UX professionals an honest look at managing relationships with clients and provide some tips on how to turn unpleasant situations into winning ones.
Let’s start at the beginning: first contact. Oftentimes, when prospective clients get in touch and tell me about a potential project, it’s immediately clear to me that the amount of work is massive, and there’s no way one UX designer could handle it. Usually, they also need visual designers, content strategists, copywriters, programmers—a whole product development team. Such a job is much better suited to an agency with resources in multiple disciplines. Read More