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The Role Of Design In The Kingdom Of Content

Written by Magnify

Category: Blog

If content sits at the top of the food chain, why do we spend so much time talking about the finer points of design? Every day we debate, experiment with and discuss topics that easily fall into the category of aesthetics, enhanced functionality and layout; in fact, relatively rarely do we talk about content. Nevertheless, even though we should concede that content is king in this realm, this doesn’t mean that design should be devalued.

It may seem logical that the user experience lives and dies by how the user relates on an emotional level to the content on a website. But this is not necessarily the case. From a design perspective, our job is tomaximize the value of every visitor, whether they love the content or hate it. The role of a UX designer is not always to make everyone feel all warm and fuzzy inside. A rich Web experience could include the emotion of happiness, humor, discontent, sadness, anger or enlightenment. A well-designed website enables us to attribute our emotion to its source and connect us to that environment through a range of senses. A UX designer should understand why and how to utilize the principles and techniques they have learned to support the website’s precious content.

(Smashing's side note: Have you already bought your copy of our brand newSmashing Book #3? The book introduces new practical techniques and a whole new mindset for progressive Web design. Written by Elliot Jay Stocks, Paul Boag, Rachel Andrew, Lea Verou, Stephen Hay, Aral Balkan, Andy Clarke and others. Thank you for your time and your support.)

Justifying User Experience Design

Investing in UX design as an amplifier of good content is not always an easy process. In many industries, a product that fills a demand and that works as it should is good enough. Most of us don’t care how an ink pen or a computer monitor makes us feel, as long as it works. A large portion of the Web still reflects this sentiment, as do clients and project managers who haven’t been educated in the value of UX.

A website is a much more involved product than an ink pen and calls for a different measurement of user satisfaction. A product that merely meets demand and works correctly does not suit a medium that is so highly interactive and saturated. As designers, our task sometimes is to convince other parties of the value ofbuilding a user’s personal engagementwith the website’s content. Fortunately, we have examples of companies that have done UX right and that have the success to show for it.

As a geek who enjoys building computers, I look toNeweggas a good example of a company that has played to its strengths to deliver a superior user experience. In its early days, Newegg’s fair prices and lightning-fast delivery of computer components made it the place to shop for IT people. This was all great, but the real kicker was that users who loved to share product strengths and weaknesses with each other could do it all on Newegg’s website.

This turned out to be a fantastic benefit for new users, who were inclined to trust the experience and suggestions of people they regarded as peers. As a result, Newegg built a massive army of geeks who generated content and provided an extremely valuable experience to its users. If you had a device or component that was functioning oddly or not at all, chances are that someone had shared the cause and maybe even a solution in a Newegg review.

Newegg acted on this opportunity the right way by using design to highlight its most valuable content. While its design may not be the slickest or most modern, Newegg provides a great experience and has high user satisfaction. Ratings and reviews by peers have become a driving force in Newegg’s design and populate nearly every page. As the design has evolved over the years, product reviews have floated to the surface of nearly every page, and the system for contributing reviews has grown in depth and functionality as well. Newegg even took this to the next level with a recentnationwide ad campaignand design. All of this came about because Newegg identified which of its content made for a strong user experience and built on it, which should be done in every Web project.

Identifying the content that makes you stand out is only the first piece of this puzzle. What we really want to explore is how to take everything we have learned about color theory, lines, shapes and visual movement and apply it to our content in a way thatdoesn’t just decorateit or even make it pop on the page, but rather that supports the conversion of a goal or delivery of a message. Much like how the primary function of petals on a flower is to attract insects to pollinate, good design ensures that your website will thrive. All of that great design talent needs to be applied not only to the content but to the layer before and after it as well.

The Delicious Design Sandwich

With virtually every website, good UX design can be sectioned into three parts or events: introduction, consumption and reaction. Content is at the core, the meat of what the user is looking for, and on both sides of the content are events that are driven by a well-executed design.

USER INTRODUCTION

The Web isa world of first impressions, andquick ones at that. Users form an opinion of a websitewithin the first few secondsof loading it. This means that the colors, the layout and the presentation of headings are all evaluated before any content is actually absorbed. Users are inclined to scan content until they zero in on something that piques their interest. Regardless of what your content actually says, the design around it controls what the users see first and how their eyes move across the sections of the page.

In addition to searching for interesting information, users will also be determining howcredible this resource is. Despite being constantly taught that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, all of us are susceptible to trusting a resource based on our familiarity with it, what our peers think of it and the time and money that we estimate was put into its construction.

Living Socialtakes advantage of this in its design in multiple ways. A quick scan of the main page after the user has entered an email address and location reveals several techniques that have been implemented to elicit a reaction from the user.

Perhaps most striking is the background image. In every city that Living Social serves, a background picture loads that the visitor can relate to. I immediately connected with this website because I did a double-take at the background image and realized that I pass by this area all the time: it’s just down the road from me!

Living Social has also done the little things right. A clear hierarchy is established on the page through the headings and content modules; the call to action is the most prominent element; and the interactions oriented around engagement are easily accessible. The counters that tell you how many people have bought the deal and how much time you have left generate sufficientpeer pressure.

When all is said and done, Living Social has invested in the introduction side of its design, which makes a lot of sense given its content. Living Social and the other daily deal websites thrive on a high volume of quick visits, which means they often live and die on first impressions. The heavy emphasis on the impression portion of this design begins with the content. Instead of fitting content into a design concept, Living Social has wrapped an appropriate design around the content that it wants to feature. But we aren’t done there.

CONTENT CONSUMPTION

Even in the process of consuming content that we’ve proposed, design plays a huge role. The crucial rules of typography control the experience that users have when reading articles. The mood of images and video can vary drastically based on their aesthetic setting. If your primary content is user-generated, then the ability of users to interact with the website and each other will be driven by the interface you’ve designed.

More than anything else, content is anopportunity to set the toneof the website. We have all witnessed the untold damage that is done when content that should have a professional tone is set in Comic Sans. The font face, size and color can do an amazing job of controlling how your website says something that leaves an impression on users, which leads to the final piece of our sandwich. Along these lines, the way you frame entire portions of the website gives the audience clues as to what their emotional reaction should be.

We see this naturally develop with websites created by designers for their own peers. Portfolios, design-related apps, and websites for networks and conferences are all designed for tone. Of course, getting too extravagant in an attempt to impress is the opposite of what we are trying to achieve here. However, in the case of a conference about HTML and CSS, a website that experiments with the edges of what’s possible with HTML and CSS is an appropriate setting for the content.

Like many websites for technology and design conferences,The Combinein Bloomington, Indiana, is highly design-driven. In addition to the slick HTML and CSS that will resonate with the professionals being targeted, the aesthetics intentionally reflect the small-town atmosphere of Bloomington. The same features that distinguish the location of this conference also encourage users to identify with the design.

USER REACTION

This may be the most understated design-driven activity on a website, but it carries huge value. How the user responds to your content is pivotal to the website’s success. These days, merelydelivering content is not enough. The Web has a wealth of information and options. In order for a website to enjoy any success, it must take advantage of referrals, links and maybe a bit of buzz on social networks. If we want to stand out on the Web, our users need to share our content with friends or contribute their own thoughts, reactions and content.

YouTube serves as a practical example of building an experience around the user’s reaction. YouTube kickstarted the concept of viral videos, but getting there required that the website be designed around the content itself. We all know that a massive amount of content is uploaded to YouTube every day, but the degree to which a video goes viral depends on how encouraged the user feels and how easily they are able to share or contribute to the experience.

It doesn’t take a trained eye to see this in action all over any given YouTube page. Suggested and related videos are always available, along with the option to share a video on your favorite social network or embed it anywhere on the Web. Of course, the design was not made to look good on its own and then this functionality shoehorned in. Again, the emphasis is on the content, and the design elements that result in the user’s reaction are all rooted in sharing or exploring that content.

In a world driven by likes, tags, tweets, shares and votes, the follow-through that a website and its content facilitates becomes a massive factor in its success or failure. A user who visits a website, views the content and then leaves generates little value for the business. For this reason, we see blog articles sprinkled and even littered with related content, suggested videos that come up after you watch a clip, and quick and easy share and save buttons everywhere. The follow-through on each of these actions is highly design-driven. The color, shape, size and location of links and buttons determine whether a visitor sees them quickly or not. But, of course, we can’t expect everyone to play the role that we define for them…

Designing For An Experience

As important a role as design plays in the perception of and reaction to your content, people still argue that auser experience cannot truly be designed. Of course,the user ultimately decides how they engagewith any design. If the goal of a design is to convert every single user into a customer, then failure is the only outcome. We can, however, design an experience that connects immediately with a target audience, delivers information with a clear tone and purpose, and encourages a response.

We want to design an experience for users who are willing to buy into it. Users come to your website most likely because they already have some interest in digging into the content, which means they are willing to play into the experience that you have designed. If a user stumbles on the website by mistake, then taking them all the way to the reaction stage of the experience becomes more of a bonus than a goal.

Different techniques for driving engagement with content can be found across the Web. If you’ve been to the blogxheightlately, you may have noticed its effort to prioritize the content in its posts. In addition to the minimalist design, the designer further isolates the content by fading elements out of view after your cursor has been idle for a few moments, leaving the article you are reading as the only element on the page.

The jury is still out on whether this makes for a better or more distracting reading experience, but this design decision clearly centers on the content that the designer wants to deliver.

A different technique is apparent on theLivestrongwebsite. When the user hits the browser’s address bar or tries to click away after reading an article, a modal window with related content pops up. It’s interesting that the modal window is enabled only in the blog section of Livestrong, and not by mistake. With a website this rich in content and from so recognizable a brand, the designers could assume that the majority of traffic to these articles would come from search engines. The goal here is to keep users from jumping back to Google for more content and to have them continue engaging with the content here.

Editor’s note: The Live Strong site no longer has this feature since it seems to have been modified right before we published this article.

Keep Designing

Now as much as ever, companies are recognizing the value that good design and a solid user experience can bring to them. UX design is about developing a road map for the user, encouraging certain actions, and developing a user base thatwantsto engage with your content.

The key to driving this engagement is to ensure that we value design in the right way, not simply as a template, theme or color scheme but as a support system for key content. We can use design to make a website unique and more memorable. We do this by laying the foundation of a good impression, enabling smooth and meaningful consumption, and encouraging engagement with the content. All three of these areas are opportunities to drive a user experience that is in harmony with our content.

Stop Redesigning And Start Tuning Your Site Instead

Written by Magnify

Category: Blog

In my nearly two decades as an information architect, I’ve seen my clients flush away millions upon millions of dollars on worthless, pointless, “fix it once and for all” website redesigns. All types of organizations are guilty: large government agencies, Fortune 500s, not-for-profits and (especially) institutions of higher education.

Worst of all, these offending organizations are prone torepeating the redesign processevery few years like spendthrift amnesiacs. Remember what Einstein said about insanity? (It’sthis, if you don’t know.) It’s as if they enjoy the sensation of failing spectacularly, publicly and expensively. Sadly, redesigns rarely solve actual problems faced by end users.

I’m frustrated because it really doesn’t have to be this way. Let’s look at why redesigns happen, and some straightforward and inexpensive ways we might avoid them.

(Smashing's side note: Have you already bought your copy of our brand newSmashing Book #3? The book introduces new practical techniques and a whole new mindset for progressive Web design. Written by Elliot Jay Stocks, Paul Boag, Rachel Andrew, Lea Verou, Stephen Hay, Aral Balkan, Andy Clarke and others. Thank you for your time and your support.)

The Diagnostic Void

Your users complain about your website’s confounding navigation, stale content, poor usability and other user experience failures. You bring up their gripes with the website’s owners. They listen and decide to take action. Their hearts are in the right place. But the wheels quickly come off.

Most website owners don’t know how to diagnose the problems of a large complex website. It’s just not something they were ever taught to do. So, they’re put in the unfortunate, uncomfortable position of operating like country doctors who’ve suddenly been tasked to save their patients from a virulent new pandemic. It is their responsibility, but they’re simply unprepared.

Sadly, many website owners fill this diagnostic void — or, more typically, allow it to be filled — with whatever solution sounds best. Naturally, many less-than-ethical vendors are glad to dress up their offerings as solutions to anyone with a problem — and a budget. The tools themselves (search engines, CMS’, social apps) are wonderful, but they’re stilljust tools— very expensive ones, at that — and not solutions to the very specific problems that an organization faces. Without proper diagnostics to guide the configuration of tools, any resulting improvements to the user experience will be almost accidental.

Sometimes design agencies are brought in to fill the diagnostic void. And while not all agencies are evil, a great many follow a business model that depends on getting their teams to bill as many hours as they can and as soon as possible. Diagnostics can slow the work down (which is why clients rarely include a diagnostic phase in their RFPs). So, many agencies move to make a quick, tangible impression (and make their clients happy) by delivering redesigns that aremostly cosmetic.

A pretty face can last only a few years, but by then the agency is long gone. Invariably, the new owner wishes to make their mark by freshening or updating the website’s look. And another agency will be more than happy to oblige. Repeat ad nauseam, and then some.

Oh, and sometimes these redesigns can be pricey. Like$18 million pricey.

See why I’m so grouchy?

Forget the Long Tail: The Short Head Is Where It’s At

Whether you’re a designer, researcher or website owner, I’ve got some good news for you: diagnostics aren’t necessarily difficult or expensive. Better yet, you’ll often find that addressing the problems you’ve diagnosed isn’t that hard.

And the best news? Small simple fixes can accomplish far more than expensive redesigns. The reason? People just care about some stuff more than they care about other stuff. A lot more. Check this out and you’ll see:

This hockey-stick-shaped curve is called a Zipf curve. (Itcomes from linguistics: Zipf was a linguist who liked to count words… but don’t worry about that.) Here it is in dragon form, displaying the frequency of search queries on a website. The most frequently searched queries (starting on the left) are very, very frequent. They make up the “short head.” As you move to the right (to the esoteric one-off queries in the “long tail”), query frequency drops off. A lot. And it’s a really long tail.

This is absolutely the most important thing in the universe. So, to make sure it’s absolutely clear, let’s make the same point using text:

In this case, tens of thousands of unique queries are being searched for on thisuniversity website, but the first one accounts for 1.4% of all search traffic. That’s massive, considering that it’s just one query out of tens of thousands. How many short-head queries would it take to get to 10% of all search traffic? Only 14 — out of tens of thousands. The 42 most frequent queries cover over 20% of the website’s entire search traffic. About a hundred gets us to 30%. And so on.

It’s Zipf’s World; We Just Live in It

This is very good news.

Want to improve your website’s search performance? Don’t rip out the search engine and buy a new one! Start by testing andimproving the performanceof the 100 most frequent queries. Or, if you don’t have the time, just the top 50. Or 10. Or 1 — test out “campus map” by actuallysearching for it. Does something useful and relevant come up? No? Why not? Is the content missing or mistitled or mistagged or jargony or broken? Is there some other problem? That, folks, is diagnostics. And when you do that with your website’s short head, your diagnostic efforts will go a very long way.

The news gets better: Zipf is a rule. The search queries for all websites follow a Zipf distribution.

And the news gets even jump-up-and-down-and-scream-your-head-off better: Zipf is true not only for your website’s search queries.Your contentworks the same way! A small subset of your website’s content does the heavy lifting. Much of the rest has little or no practical value at all. (In fact, I’ve heard a rumor that 90% of Microsoft.com’s content has never, ever been accessed. Not once. But it’s a just a rumor. And you didn’t hear it here.) Bottom line: don’t redesignallof your content — focus on the stuff that people actually need.

You’ll also see a short head when it comes to your website’s features. People need just a few of them; the rest are gravy.

And there’s more. Of all theaudience typesthat your website serves, one or two matter far more than the others. What tasks do those audience types wish to accomplish on your website? A few are short-head tasks; the rest just aren’t that important.

As you can see, the Zipf curve is everywhere. And fortunately, the phenomenon is helpful: you can use it to prioritize your efforts to tweak and tune your website’s content, functionality, searchability, navigation and overall performance.

Your Website Is Not A Democracy

When you examine the short head — of your documents, your users’ tasks, their search behavior and so forth — you’ll know where to find the most important problems to solve. In effect, you can stop boiling the ocean…

… and start prioritizing your efforts to diagnose and truly solve your website’s problems.

Now, let’s put these short-head ideas together. Below is a report card for an academic website that starts with the short head of its audience:

In other words, of all the audience types this university website has, the three most important are people who might pay money to the university (applicants,) people who are paying money now (students) and people who will hopefully pay money for the rest of their lives (alumni). How do we know they’re themost important audiences? We could go by user research; for example, the analytics might suggest that these audiences generate more traffic than anyone else. Or perhaps the university’s stakeholders believe that these are the most important ones in their influence and revenue. Or some combination of both. Whatever the case, these three audiences likely swamp all other segments in importance.

Then, we would want to know the short-head tasks and information needs of each audience type. We might interview stakeholders to see what they think (column 2). And we might perform research — user interviews and search analytics, for example — to find out what users say is most important to them (column 3).

Of course, as the good folks atxkcd demonstrate, stakeholders and users don’t always see things the same way:

That’s why talking to both stakeholders and users is important. And once you’ve figured out the short head for each, you’ll need to earn your salary and, through some careful negotiation, combine your takes on each audience type’s needs. That’s what we’ve done in column 4.

Finally, in column 5, we’ve tested each task or need and evaluated how well it works. (Because it’s a university-related example, letter grades seemed appropriate.) You can do this evaluation in an expensive, statistically significant way; but really,enough researchisout thereto suggest that you don’t need to spend a lot of time and money on such testing. More importantly, these needs and tasks are often fairly narrow and, therefore, easy to test.

So, after testing, we can see what’s not going well. Finding information on “mentoring” is hard for applicants. And current students have a devil of a time when they “look up grades.”

Now we’re done diagnosing the problems and can begin making fixes. We can change the title of the “Paired Guidance Program” page to “Mentoring.” We can create a better landing page for the transcript application. The hard part, diagnostics, is out of the way, and we cannow fix and tuneour website’s performance as much as our resources allow.

From Project To Process To Payoff

These fixes are typically and wonderfully small and concrete, but because they live in the short head, they make a huge and lovely impact on the user experience — at a fraction of the cost of a typical redesign.

Thetuning processitself is quite simple. It’s what we used to arrive at the report card below:

If you repeat this simple process on a regular basis — say, every month or quarter — then you can head off the entropy that causes fresh designs and fresher content to go rotten. Thus, the redesign that your organization has scheduled for two years from now can officially be canceled.

Your website’s owners ought to be happy about all this. And you should be, too: rather than tackling the project of getting your website “right” — which is impossible — you can now focus on tweaking and tuning it from here on out. So, forget redesigns, and start owning and benefiting from a process of continual improvement.

SPECIAL THANKS – ILLUSTRATIONS

Eva-Lotta is a UX Designer and Illustrator based in London, UK where she currently works as an interaction designer at Google. Besides her daytime mission of making the web a more understandable, usable and delightful place, she regularly takes sketchnotes at all sorts of talks and conferences and recently self-published her second book. Eva-Lotta also teaches sketching workshops and is interested in (something she calls) visual improvisation. Exploring the parallels between sketching and improvisation, she experiments with the principles from her theater improvisation practice to inspire visual work.

Stop Writing Project Proposals

Written by Magnify

Category: Blog

After several grueling days I had finally finished the proposal. I sent it off and waited for a response. Nothing. After a few weeks, I discovered that they were “just looking”. Despite the urgency and aggressive timeline for the RFP (Request For Proposal) plus the fact that we had done business with this organization before, the project was a no-go. My days of effort were wasted. Not entirely, though, because the pain of that loss was enough to drive me to decide that it wouldn’t happen again.

I work at a Web development company and we’ve experimented with proposal writing a lot over the years. We’ve seen the good and the bad, and we have found something better. In this article I will share the pains that we have experienced in the proposal writing process, the solution we adopted, and our process for carrying out that solution. I’ll also give you guidelines to help you know when this solution is and isn’t appropriate.

[Note: Have you already bought your copy of our brand newSmashing Book #3? The book introduces new practical techniques and a whole new mindset for progressive Web design. Itwillchange the way you design websites for the better.]

Proposal Writing Causes Pain

After several years of writing proposals, we began to notice that something wasn’t right. As we considered the problem we noticed varying levels of pain associated with the proposal writing process. We categorized those pains as follows:

• Getting a proposal done was usually about speed. We were racing against the clock and working hard to deliver the proposal as efficiently and as effectively as possible. However, sometimes corners would get cut. We’d reuse bits and pieces from older proposals, checking and double-checking for any references to the previous project. While the adrenaline helped, the rush gets old because you know that, deep down, it’s not your best work. Besides, you don’t even know if you’re going to close the deal, which leads to the next pain.


  The Rush
• The Risk
  Our proposal close ratio with clients that came directly to us was high. We’d work hard on the proposals and more often than not, we’d close the deal. The risk was still there, however, and I can think of several proposals that we had spent a lot of time and effort on for a deal that we didn’t get. Not getting the deal isn’t the problem — the problem is going in and investing time and energy in a thorough proposal without knowing if there is even the likelihood that you’re going to close the deal.
• The Details
  The difference between a project’s success and its failure is in the details. In proposal writing, the details are in the scope. What work is included, what is not, and how tight is the scope? Now, this is where the “rush” and the “risk” play their part. The rush typically causes us to spend less time on details and the “risk” says: “Why spell it all out and do the diligence when you might not even get the project?” A self-fulfilling prophecy, perhaps, but a legitimate concern nonetheless. Selling a project without making the details clear is asking for scope creep, and turns what started out as a great project into a learning experience that can last for years.

Now, writing is an important part of the project and I’m not about to say you shouldn’t write. Having a written document ensures that all parties involved are on the same page and completely clear on exactly what will be delivered and how it will be delivered. What I’m saying, though, is that you should stop writing proposals.

Write Evaluations, Not Proposals — And Charge For Them

A few years back, we decided to try something new. A potential client approached us and rather than preparing another project proposal, we offered the client what we now call a “Project Evaluation.” We charged them a fixed price for which we promised to evaluate the project, in all of our areas of expertise, and give them our recommendations.

They agreed, paid the price, and we set out to deliver. We put a lot of effort into that evaluation. We were in new territory and we wanted to make sure that we delivered it well. So we finished the report and sent it to them. The client liked it, agreed with our recommendations, and started a contract with us to do the work.

That project became a game changer for us, starting an on-going relationship that opened doors into a new market. It was the process of the evaluation itself that brought the new market potential to our attention, and gave us the opportunity to develop this business model. It was a definite win, and one that a project proposal couldn’t have delivered.

WHAT IS A PROJECT EVALUATION?

A “Project Evaluation”, as we’ve defined it, is a detailed plan for the work that is to be done on a project, and explains how we do it. We eliminate the guess work, and detail the project out at such a level that the document becomes a living part of the development process, being referred back to and acting as the guide towards the project’s successful completion.

The Benefits Of (Paid) Project Evaluations

As we put our proposal writing past behind us and embraced the evaluation process, we noticed a strong number of benefits. The most prominent of those benefits are the following.

• If a client is unwilling or unable to pay for a project evaluation, it can be an indicator that the project isn’t a match. Now, we may not always charge for evaluations (more on that later). We also recognize a deep responsibility on our part to make sure that we have intelligently and carefully explained the process and value of the evaluation. After all that is done, though, you may run into potential clients who just don’t want to pay what you’re charging, and it’s better to find this out right away then after writing a long proposal.

  QUALIFICATION

• ATTENTION TO DETAILS

  Having the time available to do the research and carefully prepare the recommendations means that we are able to eliminate surprises. While the end result may be a rather large document, the details are well organized and thorough. Those details are valuable to both the client (in making sure they know exactly what they’re getting) and to the development team (in making sure that they know exactly what they’re delivering).

• NO PRICING SURPRISES

  Figuring out all the details and ironing out a complete scope means that we’re able to give a fixed price, without surprises. This gives the client the assurance up front that the price we gave them is the price they’ll pay. In more than a few cases, the time we’ve spent working out the details has eliminated areas of concern and kept our margins focused on profit, not on covering us “just in case.”

• TESTING THE WATERS

  When a potential client says “Yes” to an evaluation, they are making a relatively small commitment — a first step, if you will. Rather than a proposal that prompts them for the down payment to get started on the complete project, the evaluation process gives us time and opportunity to establish a working relationship. In most cases, the process involves a lot of communication which helps the client learn more about how we work, as we learn more about how they work. All this is able to take place without the pressure of a high-budget development project. And by the end of the evaluation, a relationship is formed that plays a major factor in the decision process to move forward.

• FREEDOM TO DREAM

  Occasionally, we spend more time on an evaluation than we had initially expected. But knowing how our time is valued has given us the freedom to explore options and make recommendations that we might not have made otherwise. In our experience, the extra time and energy that the context of a paid evaluation provides for a project has consistently brought added value to the project, and contributed to its ultimate success.

The Evaluation Writing Process

Over the years we have refined (and continue to refine) a process that works well for us. As you consider the process, look for the principles behind each step, and if you decide to bring this into your business, look for ways to adapt this process and make it your own.

#1 — DO THE RESEARCH

The heart of the evaluation process is the research. If it’s a website redesign project, we read through each and every page on the website. We take notes and thoroughly absorb as much content as possible. Our objective is to get to the heart of the project and gain as much of the organization’s perspective as possible.

If it’s a custom programming project, we try to get inside the project’s concept, challenge it, look for flaws in the logic, research relevant technologies, and work to make recommendations that keep the goals of the project in mind.

We spend time with the client by phone, over Skype, via email, and sometimes even in person. As our research uncovers problems or finds solutions, we run them by the client and gather their feedback.

The research process allows us to go deep, and in our experience it has always paid off, giving us a thorough grasp of the project and providing a foundation to make intelligent, expertise-driven recommendations.

#2 — OFFER RECOMMENDATIONS

Each project evaluation is different. Depending on the nature of the project we may make recommendations regarding technology, content organization, marketing strategies, or even business processes. The types of recommendations we make have varied greatly from project to project, and are always driven by the context and goals of the project.

When it comes to areas of uncertainty for the client, we work hard to achieve a balance between an absolute recommendation and other options. If the answer is clear to us, we’ll say so and make a single, authoritative recommendation. However, when an answer is less clear, we give the client options to consider (along with our thoughts) on why or why not an option might be a match.

We share our recommendations with the client throughout the evaluation process, and when the final report is given, there are rarely any surprises.

#3 — PREPARE THE SCOPE

After we’ve worked through our recommendations, we put together a technical scope. This is typically the longest part of the document. In the case of a Web design project, we go through each page of the website, explaining details for the corresponding elements of that page. The level of detail will vary based on the importance of a particular page.

The scope document is detailed in such a way that the client could take it in-house, or even to another developer, and be able to implement our recommendations.

As the project commences, the scope document will often be referred to, and can function as a checklist for how the project is progressing.

#4 — PREPARE THE TIMELINE & ESTIMATE

With the scope complete, calculating the cost and preparing an estimate becomes a relatively straightforward process. While how one calculates the price may vary, all the information is now available to see the project through from start to finish, identifying the challenges, and determining the amount of resources required to meet the project’s objectives.

Note:Prior to the start of the evaluation process, we nearly always give the potential client a “ball park” estimate. So far, that estimate typically ends up being about ten times the cost of the evaluation.

We take the estimating process very seriously, both in the ball park stage and especially here within the context of an evaluation. Once we set a price down we don’t leave room for “oops!” and “gotchas!”, and that means we are extra careful to calculate as accurately as possible, both for our sake and for the sake of the client.

Now, because of the nature of the evaluation, we are often able to research and explore options above and beyond what the client originally brought to our attention. In the case of a Web application, this might be an added feature or a further enhancement added onto a requested feature. Within the scope of the evaluation we carefully research these extras, and when appropriate, present them as optional “add-ons” within the timeline and estimate.

They are truly optional, and while always recommended by us, we leave the decision up to the client (there’s no use wasting research energy on an add-on you wouldn’t fully recommend). In cases where the budget allows for them, they are nearly always accepted. In cases where a tighter budget is involved, the add-ons are typically set aside for future consideration.

When Evaluations Are Appropriate

A project evaluation functions like the blueprints for a new office building. Imagine that I own a successful construction company, and I have a number of world-class office construction projects to my credit. A new client comes to me after seeing some of my work and tells me “I want a building just like that!”. Assuming, of course, that I own the rights to the building, I can say “Sure!” and tell them how much it will cost. Why? The blueprints have already been drawn.

Now, there will be variable factors, such as where they choose to have the building built, and any customizations they may request matter. But in most cases no new blueprints will be needed, and I can proceed with construction without charging them for the plans.

Suppose another client comes to me after seeing one of my buildings and asks me to build an entirely new design for them. A new design calls for new blueprints all of their own, and these must be developed before the project begins. Can you imagine a large-scale construction project without any blueprints?

Web development is the same way. In our experience, evaluations are appropriate when a client comes to us and asks us to take on a project outside of our existing set of “blueprints”. Examples where we’ve found a project evaluation necessary include:

• A redesign of an existing website.

• Developing a new Web application.
• Bringing new technology into an existing project.

Without an evaluation you’re either left to go ahead and do the research on your own (with the weight of the rush, and the risk on your shoulders) or you’re stuck making as educated a guess as possible for the scope of the project. This dangerous guessing in a situation where an evaluation is appropriate can leave you with an estimate that is too high (which can mean losing the project) or even worse, an estimate that is too low.

When Evaluations Are Not Appropriate

When a project is familiar, and doesn’t require an evaluation (or fits within the scope of an existing type of evaluation), we give an informal, direct estimate along with a scope of the work. Small to mid-sized Web design projects typically fall into this category. While the content and design are new, the process isn’t. The key here is the experience and confidence in your abilities (and the abilities of your team) that the work will get done within budget to the expected delight of all parties involved.

Conclusion

Project evaluations up until now haven’t been given much attention. I would suggest it is a simple concept that has been overlooked and passed by amidst the rush of a booming Web development industry. I invite you to implement the process, experience the benefits, and stop the pain of proposal writing.

I thank you, dear reader, for your time in considering this concept. And I thank you in advance for your feedback.