Category: Work

I’m thinking this video project could have used a bit more pre-planning with the video editor and DVD producer. AKA, me. I mean what we’re getting is good. But it could have been more…

Update: Actually not bad at all. It’s not going to win any of those high-falutin’ design/movie awards but it’s going to do the job and look good while doing it.

I have an interesting design “problem” I’m working on. A client wants a new website. They would like it to become a useful and usable resource. The target audience for this site come from rural or economically-challenged demographics. So bandwidth and old technology constraints are real issues that need to be addressed by the design. Quite an interesting challenge in that regard. The client however seems to really want to use Flash – mainly just to rotate some imagery around. In other words, it serves no useful purpose other then decoration. Normally that would be fine, but considering the target audience and the constraints we’re dealing with, I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to add Flash. What do you think?

Update: So the after some discussion, the client decided to do go ahead with Flash movie, understanding that perhaps some of the target audience would not see it or have an optimal experience with it. The client did reduce the amount of images that the Flash movie uses, which reduced the file size some 100 Kb which is good.

In the midst of a website redesign project, I sent an email to the client outlining several issues I was currently grappling with in the design and some of my feedback on some of the client’s feedback on previous design iterations. This email outlined the problems and suggested solutions and sought client feedback on these issues. No images or comps were provided, mainly because I wasn’t comfortable with the state the design was currently in. I naturally cc’d my supervisor, who is also managing this project.

The manager was at first upset and worried. They construed my email remarks as suggesting that I was entirely opposed to the client’s feedback, and they worried that without images to show what I was talking about, the client would get confused, and they now wanted all communication with the client to be cleared with them first.

After hearing the manager explain their concerns, I saw where they were coming from and could indeed see how my email message could be improperly interpreted or confusing. I then explained where my email was coming from. This definitely helped the manager see I was not sending this message off half-cocked. But to ensure that the message was more clearly conveyed and that no damage was done, we had a conference call with the client to go over the issues detailed in my email. It turns out the client took my email the way I intended (whew!)

The big lesson from this experience:

Emails still leave room for miscommunication where verbal or in-person communication can reduce those possibilities. After talking with the manager, we resolved our differences in what they percieved and what I actually meant in the email and the conference call with the client made sure that the proper message was communicated. The more humans involved, the more possibility for communication issues.