Pt3 Establishing a Process

For the Designer Musings

Trust Comes First

In order to have a smooth-rolling and successful project, it is imperative that the client have an established trust in the designer(s) as experts in their industry. You will witness the repeated success of projects seen through to effective completion when there is a strict adherence to a thoroughly outlined process.

If you have not yet established a design process, it would be a very good idea to do so. If you already have (give yourself a good pat on the back if this is the case), you may still find a few useful ideas that can strengthen your existing process.

Benefits of Displaying a Process

Written or not, all designers have a process they follow. Rather than store this is your head, it is a very healthy excerise to get this out onto paper. Even if you don’t display it on your website, transferring your process to a written format is very helpful in solidifying your process within your own mind and is exceedingly helpful for those that you do or might potentially work with.

Obviously each project has its own unique challenges. No two projects are alike and this is why its a good idea to have both a General Process as well as a Project Specific Process.

Your General Process should be generic enough to display on your website and cover at least the basics that typically apply to all of your projects. Displaying this process on your website can do a number of things for you:

Adds Perceived Value to Your Services
- Potential clients see your process broken down comprehensively and appreciate the level of investment you put into your work. Your attention to detail will come through the outline of your process and will help clients trust you more when they see how much attention is given to all of your projects (including theirs).
Establishes You as Knowledgable in Your Industry
- Anyone can say they build websites. It’s another thing to outline how you do it. For example: An architect who outlines his process of Schematic Design, Construction Drawings, etc. will instill more trust than one who does not.
Sets Client Expectations
- As we cover more in depth in the next article of this series, setting client expectations goes a long way in preventing future problems.

Break it Down

First, group the distinctly different sections of your process into several larger categories. We’ll use the Bold Perspective Design Process to illustrate. In this example, we have the steps grouped into 5 categories:

Strategy
Identity
Web Design
Development
Launch

This is obviously not a definitive list; yours should vary depending on what services you provide. Nevertheless, it is a good starting point and should give you a good idea of how to begin crafting the steps of your own process.

Take the first of your larger categories and list the steps that category entails. In the Bold Perspective Process, each category has between 6–9 steps. For example, in the Strategy category, we have the following steps:

Assess Questionnaire
Research Industry
Present Proposal
Revise Proposal (if necessary)
Finalize Agreement
Plan Project

Each of these steps have a description and they are all of a similarly modest length. Most people won’t read everything, but for those that do go into to depth, you want to make sure the text will be something of value to them.

Make it Scan Friendly

Processes can be very extensive and many viewers will gloss over your process. For this reason, you should establish a few levels of clear hierarchy for the reader:

Categories
Steps
Descriptions

Depending on their level of interest, a reader will subconsciously pick one of these levels and read only the text in that level and the ones above it (thus skipping over any content of a lower hierarchical value than that of their interest). Make each one interesting.

Conclusion

These examples should give you enough to get your gears turning. Think of them as guidelines and be creative with your execution. The important thing is to make sure you have a process!