CLIENT FOCUSED DESIGN vs USER FOCUSED DESIGN
April 9th, 2008 | by benc |I had an interesting meeting this morning in regards to a proposed micro site/data capture website. It still amazes me that clients often dictate information flow and design based largely on the corporate goal. Overlooking the fact that the end user needs to be engaged and follow a quite different path to be able to achieve their own goals in an orderly fashion.
On one side, the clients goal - to obtain sign-ups.
The other side, the users goal - to obtain the dangling carrot.
By only looking at client objectives we risk neglecting the end user and creating sites that simply don’t work, don’t achieve objectives and waste time and money. When there are two opposing goals (such as in this case), we need to be more careful in planning the user journey, and not to be afraid to object to the proposal. Try to find a compromise, and logically plan the work from the end users perspective, of course, while not forgetting the clients objective!
Sounds simple right?
It should be, but like I said at the start, it still amazes me how often it happens…
