October, 2009

It used to be so much simpler. Do you want chocolate, strawberry or vanilla ice cream? Coffee: with or without white/sweet? How many pages will your new Web site have? Now we have an infinite number of ice cream flavors, Starbucks inspired myriad coffee concoctions, and database/CMS controlled Web content. Everything is possible... but at what price?

When a print collateral piece is produced, it is done. It is well understood that once something is printed, it is finished and the cost of changes is high (reprinting). But because Web sites can be changed at any time, they are. The problem is that these changes occur continuously throughout the project since doors are continually opened to new possibilities. What is not always understood is that each time you step through one of these new doorways, additional costs are incurred... either robbing from other budgets or the generation of Change Orders.

How do you quantify something that is constantly being redefined? How can you estimate costs when a multitude of parameters have not even been thought of yet?

In the communications design industry, a value-based fee structure has been used for decades. Meaning the value of the ideas, not the time it takes to uncover them, is what the client really needs or cares about. It is our responsibility to generate those ideas and create a delivery mechanism that is appropriate for the intended audience(s). This tradition works well for well-defined projects such as print collateral, video, strategy, planning. Where it breaks down is when elements are added downstream and costs need to be covered with additional funding.

I started looking around for pricing models that traditionally work with these types of situations. It occurred to me that industrial/product design has a large engineering component that makes their designs work. Gee... sounds like a Web site. So, how do industrial design firms price their work? I started asking friends who own firms around the country, and found diverse answers:

"We only charge on a fixed-fee basis. T&M (time and materials) sets up an adversarial environment with the client (last time it was 37 hours, and this time it took 40. why?)"

"We only charge on a T&M basis. Fixed-fee sets up an adversarial environment with the client (you said it would cost $100,000 and now you are nickel-and-diming me to death). We explain it by saying we are guides taking clients up the mountain: Every time the trip is different, even though the route is similar."

"We charge fixed-fee for the scope assessment, research and design, and charge T&M for production. The production is segmented into small pieces to allow cost overrun controls. Then, if the client has made a change at that level, corrections are easier and quicker to account for."

Not exactly a conclusive answer, but plenty of ingredients for my brain soup. Here are my conclusions:

1. Create a fixed-fee budget for the Scope Assessment that maps to specific deliverables.

2. Create a Budget Estimate for design and production. This is based on past experience (both with the specific client and others), deadline considerations (how will the staff utilization work with the timelines), anticipated client changes in direction (since it always happens at least a little). This estimate is based on hourly projections and many smaller segments that need to be signed off by the client before proceeding. This can help avoid the "robbing Peter to pay Paul" syndrome.

3. Have the Project Manager get a clear set of goals for the project from the client: Is cost control the most important factor? Is meeting the business objectives the most important?

I'm sure this thinking is only good for a few months till the next online revolution shakes things up again. On Monday you figure out how to work with a certain tool, only to come in Tuesday and find it missing, and a new tool has taken it's place. But I'm not complaining. All this chaos is what makes Interaction Design so fun.

I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.

Pablo Picasso Artist

I started writing this to share about this life-changing ice cube tray that I discovered, but the topic has quickly grown into something bigger. We'll get to the ice cube tray shortly.

Charles and Ray Eames, one way or another, introduced to me a phrase/concept that has been stuck in my head for years: "Designer as host." Try as I may, not even Google can help me find out more about this particular phrase. I'm probably remembering it incorrectly, but the concept is valid regardless: A designer is a host, of sorts, to any user/viewer who finds themselves at the mercy of whatever it is that the designer has designed (products, printed material, websites, etc.). Hopefully they are a good host. If you are a designer or are hiring one, imagine that your users/viewers/readers are guests in your house. How would you treat them?

Example. Bad Host.
I was graciously gifted a stainless steel water bottle. It is attractive, well-made and well-concieved, except for one important detail: the opening at the top is exactly the wrong size for the human face. A little bigger and you could drink from it like a glass. A little smaller and you could chug from it like a soda bottle. The way it is.... nearly impossible to use without choking, spilling or splashing yourself in the eye. I thought maybe it was just my big nose or funny chin so I asked around - the problem is nearly universal. Too bad. It could have been a really nice bottle. If only the designer had imagined (or tested) what it might be like to use their product. Not a very good host, I'm afraid. Makes me think they must have been more interested in making or selling bottles than what it might be like to use one. Puts me off a bit. I feel jilted. I often find myself angry at a product or company, muttering that they must not be a very good host. If they ever invite me over for roast beef, I might think twice (maybe).

Good host: Oxo Ice Cube Tray.
Besides a few special or novelty shapes designed for particular purposes, most ice cubes seem to work just as well as the others for the purpose of chilling your average drink. Some are smaller, some are bigger. They are round-ish or square-ish. You may have a preference, but in the end, the differences are not great - functionally speaking. But what about the user's experience - in particular: getting the little bastards out of the tray? I'd venture a guess that 10-20% of ice cubes fall to the floor/sink/counter top during the noisy and frustrating effort of extraction. At least as many break in the process, and some of them never come out at all. You twist the tray, bang them on the counter, try to pop the perfect amount of cubes out with a deft flipping motion - without losing any over the edge. I'm picturing the frustrated, bedraggled house wife at the beginning of an infomercial. There must be a better way! Indeed there is. An ice cube with a rounded bottom is easily extracted by pushing down on one side... the other side pops up like a Whack-a-Mole, and you can grab it easily. That's it. Good host. The designer had the user in mind. Makes me feel welcome, like they care about me as a person, and the quality of my life. I honestly appreciate that.

Why is this so interesting to me? It's a great example of how a silly little detail can greatly change your user's attitude about your product or company. It can color their whole experience. The same principle applies to print and website design. Is it easy to find the information I am looking for in your brochure or website? Do I have to dig for five minutes to find your phone number? Where are the office hours listed? Are you really going to make me count the months on my fingers when I'm giving you the expiration date on my credit card, or do you include the numbers in the pull down menu?

As designers we are in a position to play host, and in so doing we not only make people's everyday experiences a little happier, we reflect well upon the clients that hire us to represent them. Everyone wins when our designs are considerate - like a good host.

I can't remember the last time I bought an ice cube tray. I guess they come with the refrigerator most of the time. This is worth upgrading. Chalk it up as one of life's little triumphs and drink to that!

Two services that I use on a regular basis have been hit with service interruptions this week. T-Mobile has had ongoing problems with Sidekick services, and I've been personally affected/afflicted with an inability to use my phone's browser. I called customer service about 24 hours after it started happening and was greeted with a pre-recorded general "We know it's happening" message. Fortunately for me, I sit in front of a PC for most of my waking hours, so I can put up with the lack of service, especially since the company is going to be providing me a credit for an entire month's worth of service.

Facebook, too, has had its problems this week. An unknown number of users have been unable to access their accounts and they're not pleased by it. Facebook has some 300 million users, and if even one percent of users are locked out, that's a lot of potential anger.

People put so much of their lives--their contact information, their primary communication mechanism--into Facebook that when it's suddenly unavailable for an indefinite amount of time for an unknown (or at least uncommunicated-to-users) reason, frustration is natural. And, unlike T-Mobile, Facebook cannot simply refund user fees because (obviously) it's already free.

Facebook is, at some level, a victim of its own success and its users' high expectations. If it hopes to maintain its dominant position in the social networking universe, it needs to have plans in place to avoid emotionally isolating its users when technical snags arise.