We make a practice of telling prospective clients to call us as early as possible when planning a potential project. This is to prevent them from going too far down a path that might have benefited from our input and making choices they can’t easily undo.
In other words, don’t start spending time and money before talking to us because we don’t want you to waste any, even if we aren’t ultimately the right people for the job. (Folks at startups might enjoy an older post on the topic.)
But, there is such a thing as too early. If a client organization doesn’t have their internal situation sorted, trying to have a reasonable conversation about a project—let alone go through with one—will just lead to tears and recriminations.
A few weeks ago, someone asked a pretty good question on Quora, “What are the questions you need to have answered before you approach a UX or UI designer?”.
I figured it was worth repeating my answer here because everyone in client services will benefit if all potential clients think about these things in advance. And the clients themselves will benefit most of all.
The first and most important question is, “What are your goals in hiring the designer?” Everything else follows from that.
In addition to the obvious direct business goals related to the app or service, etc, you are creating, it’s also very helpful if you flush out any secondary goals. How do you expect your organization to benefit by bringing in someone from the outside? For example, do you expect to learn from additional expertise, or is the designer or design team just another set of resources you want to seamlessly plug in to your existing process? Are you also looking for the enforced structure that design project management can bring?
So, here are some of the big questions we ask people before proposing on a project:
- What are your overall goals? What does a successful project mean to you and to your business?
- What are you looking for in a design partner in terms of skills and services? Any other qualities you hope they will have?
- How much time do you have to complete the work and why?
- How much budget have you allocated for the designer’s work? (Please, do not be cagey about this. It wastes everyone’s time. If you honestly don’t know how much the work should cost, that’s totally fine, but don’t be a jerk or just disappear if the quote is higher than you’d hoped or expected.)
- Who from your side will be working on this project and in what roles?
- Who will be providing input and who has approval and decision-making power?
- What internal organizational challenges to completing this successfully do you anticipate?
The implication of course, is that not only should you answer these questions for your own organization, but that you also need to share the complete answers with the designers you are considering hiring.
If you are concerned about revealing sensitive or valuable information, asking a designer to sign a non-disclosure agreement is fine. No professional should consider it an affront. NDAs are fairly common practice.
You need to be willing to share sufficient information to allow the designer to scope the project and create a bid. And, if you’re not a designer yourself, you may not know which withheld information potentially conceals a tremendous amount of scope.
Bottom line, get all your hopes, expectations, and assumptions sorted internally before approaching a designer, and then be prepared to have a straightforward conversation once you do.