The right and wrong way to create a design concept

It’s a rookie mistake, going from signing a contract with a client straight to delivering a full design concept. Some of us do a little more discovery, or take additional steps along the way, but few designers really take the time to stage the process of developing the design concept. Guess what? Those extra steps will make your job easier, and your design hours less.

The two most important elements of getting an “OK” on a design concept are keeping the client in the loop and listening to them along the way, and educating the client adequately. The problems that you are most likely to run into are #1 the client doesn’t understand why you did what you did, or somewhere along the line you took a left turn when they were expecting a right turn.

Now I must stress that I am not advocating that you should simply be a “yes man/woman” and do what ever the client asks, or that the client is always right. Only that you are going to have a much more difficult time justifying all of your decisions with a finished concept than if you explain the decisions along the way. In fact, you will find that your design decisions will be taken more seriously if you keep the client educated and informed. After all you are the expert, and at the end of the day it doesn’t matter if the client likes it as long as the site user likes it (but that is a whole other post).

Educating the Client

The first step is educating the client to the process, and this is one of the most important steps. Inform them on how you come up with design concepts, what you will use to make design decisions (whether it is content that will be on the page, resolution restrictions, users age, accessibility, etc), at what points will you show them design concepts, what filler text is, if you use it, how they should look at and observer the design concepts.

Make sure the client understands the important of usability, scalability, resolution, download speed, or any other aspect that you want to incorporate into the final website.

Failing to do this and you will run into the client that likes or dislikes a concept for reasons that really are not applicable. Maybe because of how it looks printed out, or maybe they will dislike breadcrumbs because it is “redundant.” I once had a client who picked one design over another because they thought it felt more “content rich,” which was a result of one having more filler text where the other simply had white space at the bottom. Either one could have been equally “content rich.”

Keeping the client in the loop

Keeping the client in the loop is all about developing stages for your design concepts. At each stage you will hand over the work thus far, explain your reasons, and get approval to move forward. This way it is much harder to make a wrong turn, and it is harder for a client to change their mind or question your design decissions.

The first step to any good design concept is developing a creative brief. It sounds like extra work, but it will help your design time itself and prevent unnecessary revisions. A creative brief essentially outlines all of the elements that the design should incorporate and consider. Often times it will cover the typical user, the feel the site should have, and the reaction users should have.

So for example it might say that the typical user is a 25 year old male, it should feel exciting with a lot of movement, bright vivid colors, with a grungy style.

Once that is outlined the client will understand why you went with the grungy look when they like the clean white look.

The next step is wire framing. I am not going to spend a whole lot of time explaining everything about wire framing, but I will describe the basics. Wire framing is simply using solid objects and shapes to show where all the elements of a site will be located. It is a great way to build a site that has great user experiences, as you are forced to think about best placement of key information and content rather than focusing on what “looks best.”

Once you have the wire frame signed off you can move on to the actual graphical mock up. You could fully develop the mock up and hand it over to the client, but I like to take it a step farther and get approval on photography, color pallets, and typography.

Like I said in the beginning of the article, it really sounds like a lot of work. It will save you time, I assure you. In addition, it will help you produce a better design as well. Between working faster and producing better work you have added benefits including more free time and higher hourly pay.