What are your site's user needs and client needs?
These are two fundamental questions to ask and answer in
order to base your design decisions on a solid foundation.
So, ask yourself, what does the user need from the site?
And what are the needs and goals of the client?
If we think about it,
if we don't know the answers to these questions,
we don't really know what to build in the first place.
All other decisions we make from here on out will be determined by these requirements.
By the way let me make sure that everyone understands what
I mean when I say user and client.
Users are the people that will access the sites.
You can also think about them as visitors, or customers,
or the target audience and if it's helpful you can think of their needs as visitor needs,
or customer needs, or a target audience needs.
The client is the business owner or the director of an organization.
It's the person in charge,
the one who hired you to design their website.
The Client might be your customer,
but they're not the customer of the website you will create.
You can also think of the client needs as business needs or more generally website needs.
Of course you might not be working with the boss directly,
that really depends on the size of the business or organization.
Your primary day-to-day contact might be an assistant or the marketing department.
By the way an added difficulty for students at
this point is that student projects often don't have an actual clients.
It's true that for the project in this course sequence,
I gave you a general project brief,
but you came up with the specific idea for your project
so you yourself have to play the part of the clients.
That can make certain aspects a little easier.
You don't have to deal with a client who might disagree with your decisions.
But it takes away some of the real world complications projects inevitably have.
But that's okay.
If you in fact become a web designer,
you will have lots of opportunities to gain
real world experience in working with actual clients.
But now back to our discussion of user needs and client needs.
What's important at this point is that these needs are stated clearly and in
detail so that there's no room for confusion or ambiguity for you or the clients.
Everyone needs to be on the same page.
That's why you will summarize your findings in
a written strategy document at the end of this project phase.
Also, stay away from overly broad statements.
Making money as a client need is nice but it's way too
vague and more specific rephrasing could be investigate
how to use ads in order to grow revenue or implement
search engine optimization so that more people will find the site and purchase products.
Or, communicate the advantages of the Pro plan
better so that more users will become paying members.
Prevent using tired cliches.
Every user wants a site that is easy to navigate for example,
so it's not really a distinguishing need.
By the same token, don't identify needs that are too narrow.
Your client might love yellow backgrounds but at this point,
it's way too early for such decisions.
A need could be for the site to create a feeling of urgency and energy.
Later on you might then decide that a vibrant yellow background
fulfills these needs but again that is a decision for a later phase.
In general, at this point in the process,
you should simply identify all the needs without having to come up with solutions.
Keep things open and loose.
Even though the client might tell you with utmost urgency we definitely need a blog,
your job is to probe such statements a little deeper by asking why?
Maybe the client's goal is to have a place for news on their site or they are looking for
an outlet to share their professional writing
or the sites search engine ranking needs to be improved.
All these could be good reasons for a blog but again,
you can decide on that later.
Plus you might actually discover that the client simply likes
the idea of a blog everyone else has one, right?
And that they're not aware of the amount of work it
will take to constantly create new blog content.
Now, most of the time,
user needs will align nicely with client needs.
For example take a site that sells books.
Users of that site obviously want to buy books and
the client who owns the site wants to increase the amount of orders.
Same with the website that offers online classes.
Users come to the site to learn and the client
wants to enroll as many students as possible.
A news website let's say,
is visited by users looking for interesting and informative writing,
while the client wants to have as many page hits as possible.
But there are instances when user and client needs don't line up so neatly.
When they are in fact opposing one another.
Here are a few examples.
a reader of an online newspaper wants to read articles in peace but the client,
the owner of the newspaper needs to show ads for their business model to be sustainable.
There's a tension between these needs as ads can
get in the way of a pleasant reading experience.
Or isn't it nice when websites offer the option to check out as a guest?.
It's more simple for the user,
they don't need to think of yet another password but the client might
have specific reasons for user accounts to be mandatory.
Here's another big one.
Users often want the option to talk to a human being to
have their questions answered and issues resolved.
So, their need is to find a phone number on the website.
It's in the client's interests however to limit
the amount of time support staff spends on the phone,
they will save money this way.
So, the opposing need is to design a website that answers
customer questions without them having to pick up the phone.
When you're working on a real world project with an actual client,
it's likely that the client will be very eager to communicate their needs to you.
But it's the actual user of the site that is sometimes forgotten along the way.
It's your job as a designer to be an advocate for them and to remind your client that
an effective user experience must be centered around an understanding of user needs.
So, let's finish up this segment with an example.
Here are the user and client needs that we
identified while working with the Pasadena Conservatory on their site.
I invite you to pause the video for a moment and to read through the lists in detail.
Roman JasterVisiting Faculty, Program in Graphic Design
