Meetup.com was chosen as the vehicle for encouraging this activity because it seems to strike the right balance between professional and personal interests, has a large following, is an acceptable price to start your own Meetup.com group and has a reasonably intuitive interface. This is the write up for the Designers’ Forum:

This group is for designers, film makers, graphic artists and animators in the Chester area. The focus is on creating a support network made up of freelancers and company employees who enjoy meeting other people with a similar interest in designerly activity of different sorts.

The next meetup on 12 September at Telfords Warehouse [2pm] is all about how we use the web as professionals and for personal inspiration:

“Spec” has become the short form for any work done on a speculative basis. In other words, any requested work for which a fair and reasonable fee has not been agreed upon, preferably in writing.

This practice has become popular because many companies erroneously view it as a quick and easy way to get the best ideas from designers. Unfortunately, requesting speculative design is a poor business decision because it caters to the lowest common denominator of design. It also forces designers to engage in the poor design practice of making snap decisions.
- no-spec.com

The Business of Business

I would agree to a certain point with the no-spec team view on this but not entirely, and there is more to add. The problem with this method is that the energy, experience and time that is required to come up with even a reasonably professional design needs some kind of reward equivalent to the energy put in, after all, the business of business is business as they say.

The no-spec team imply that snap decisions automatically lead to poor design – not always! Any level of professional visual input is valid and useful even if it explains to the client what they don’t want or their reaction is that a design is inappropriate. Also, a client may use elements of a design either consciously or subconsciously that contribute to the final solution by providing influence – this may of course not be directly obvious or attributable to the originator of the idea. This is the fundamental problem – ideas from even fairly lightweight designers have some value and may even subconsciously steer the company’s identity, product or website in a way that leads to massive success that would never have been there without that freebie!

To be honest, sometimes the only way to learn is the hard way and over 8 years of self employment this has only really happened significantly once with a company who will remain nameless. A large project looking at online document storage put out a challenge to several designers and selected the best from a group. Not only did this take 3-4 hours of my time to produce ideas with clarity and reason, I also attended an hour long meeting with a 3 hour round trip. This was all getting a bit much before i knew it and a simple concept had now turned into a full days work with no pay. Lesson learned.

Don’t Frighten Them Away

The way to avoid this image of the obnoxious designer is not necessarily by badging-up your site with a NO-SPEC “brightly coloured alarm-bells ringing” badge or agressively demanding a signature on a contract before you will even speak to them, but almost to side-step the issue of speculative design altogether by discussing design work with potential clients in a general sense when you meet them. Examine their reaction to you and do not be afraid to ask for a limited budget to prove your worth to them in a bite sized mini-project from which they are given a set of quality ideas and continue working with you without having initially commited all of their budget to an unknown creative type. If you sense they are looking for speculative work or something for nothing then they are to be avoided or at the very least test their reaction to your reasoning as to why they should pay for your time even on a trial basis. Personally, I always request between 6-10 hours work with a client for my bite size trial period which to be fair is slightly easier job with my portfolio in existence.

Limited Portfolio?

If your problem is that you need to get on the design ladder to get your portfolio moving and you are starting in your design career then you may be tempted by speculative work, “design competitions” [often an alternative way of describing 'freebies from designers'] or freebies! Occasionally these may bring success but more often they bring frustration to both parties. Here are a few thoughts that may help:

• Consider consulting your previous educational establishment at what ever level this may be and see what sort of companies they may have contact with.
• Try to establish a trade off between the real-world skills you have to offer and the rewards you may receive – even if this is simply working for a well known respectable organisation for a few days in return for a slice of their reputation and experience [though caution is required here as work experience on a basis of more than a couple of weeks is a minefield also!]. I would normally recommend this very early on in a design career – school or university level but not much beyond that.
• Sometimes your payback is exposure and promotion – but do ensure that you will receive this to the extent that you expect it by clearly establishing with the client what is reasonable to expect and getting a copy or photograph of the end product! Personally, I only reserve this type of payment for situations where I was informally involved in visual creativity. For example, I recently took some photos of my friend’s kid’s karting race at a local circuit for fun and something to give my friend to remember the day. A magazine called me to ask me if they could use a couple of them in an article they were publishing about the event – I was happy to do this as selling these images on something like iStock would be difficult because of the many privacy and corporate laws that exist for selling an image [eg no logos, no people without model release forms etc]. So, the agreement was that they must include my website in the photo credit which could generate traffic and potentially have a monetary value.
• Be clear on what you can offer and honest about your skills along with a willingness to have your client or work experience at the centre of your world – ie want to succeed.

* the brief states that the Flash animation must not be a linear Powerpoint style presentation.

Design Tools

Two of the most efficient tools for beginning a design project are a pen and an A4 or A5 pad. These can be used in a variety of ways:

• Spider diagram or Mindmap exploring initial thoughts from the design brief and gradually narrowing down more clearly defined lines of thought through the use of a tree structure. This tree structure can also contain links between some of the branches where there are relevant links between similar levels of the tree structure. You could use something like FreeMind.
• Consider all the topics and issues surrounding a subject by entering it into the search box at WikiMindMap.
• To do lists. A very important part of a designers thought processes – acting as a reminder for tasks, lists within certain areas of a mind map or a break down of timescales and deadlines for delivery of design work. Try creating a Google Homepage using iGoogle and adding Remember The Milk as an addon to iGoogle – this is a great way to help keep activities listed in a useful way.
• Sketches of the layout, logos and colour scheme for the product. A designer rarely begins this part of the process on his or her computer. Ideas can be quickly tried out and explored using this method and the pen and pad is a couple of tools a designer should rarely be without.

The designer may use the sketches created to show to a client in a meeting or scanned and sent over the net – using [free] screen sharing facilities on www.acrobat.com or even Skype can be very useful – in tests Skype has always come out as the most efficient tool for this purpose. This can often lead to a significant leap forward in client / designer communication [depending on the quality of sketches] without sacrificing too many hours of the project. These precious hours can then be spent refining the final chosen design.

One thing that should not be underestimated is the use of written documents and emails. These should be stored for future reference and will often act as security or insurance for decisions made or problems to resolve. When an email can be referred to during any part of the process it allows the designer to be confident in his or her development of an idea. Ultimately, the best approach to dealing with a client is not to need these emails to refer back to in the way that ‘proves a point’ but to foster a culture of trust and understanding as described in the Design Process 1 article.

Evaluating Your Design

One of the main ways to evaluate your design is to compare it to the original brief and associated questions asked at the beginning of the project. If your questions were not detailed enough then evaluating your design and concluding the project becomes more difficult. Your brief and questions should be the key statements whereby the design is evaluated and should you feel that you have made your case then you can proceed with contacting the client and demonstrating your product. On the right is the sort of development image that could be presented to a client along with an explanation of how the app would work. The reaction to this initial presentation is crucial in terms of establishing whether you are on the right lines or not.

When contacting the client, be prepared to take notes, negotiate changes to the design and evaluate new ideas. Clients are busy going about their daily business and will often not have considered how many options and trials the designer reached before his or her conclusion and will need talking through these clearly in many cases so that the benefits to the work you have done are clearly identifiable. Agree another evaluation date and set a list of tasks to conclude this next design evaluation. Be careful not to undersell your skills if the costing is set but also ensure that the client gets the maximum value for their money.

The process of evaluation and conclusion will be covered elsewhere in this blog at a future date. For the moment, the principles mentioned above and their relationship to establishing a solid and clear brief are sufficient.

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Students at Loughborough University’s Department of Design and Technology have been given the task of completing an interaction design exercise. The first part of the brief was to demonstrate two or three examples of applications that could be created to assist users of the Joggler. Marks are awarded for innovation, design and value to the customer. I have been asked to assist the students during the second part of the project where students must create a simulation of one of their designs using Adobe Flash.

The Brief

The Adobe Flash interaction design brief is outlined below:

Here you will be required to create a Flash application (.swf) that interactively demonstrates the one application you have developed. You will not be expected to show the entire functionality of the application, but one or two features in some detail. The Flash application should conform to your individual screen layouts & flows handed in for assignment 1. The application should be shown on the appropriate Joggler layout (this does not have to be a photo realistic joggler, just the same screen and button dimensions). This will require good design and construction of graphics and navigation options.

The Flash application is to be used to show the client how the specific new application or feature works so must include clear instructions. It must however allow the client to be able to interact and navigate in a non-linear fashion (this is not a linear power point project!). This is an exercise in a variety of design disciplines, user-centric analysis, planning, graphic, interface, information, usability. The principles of interaction must be applied to the Flash file. Accompanying the .swf file you must fill out a ‘Flash element summary’.

Product Familiarity

Often, a client will be able to refer to other products, websites they like, print examples they have seen or other media that has some features or elements that they like. In this case, the product is now in the shops and the brief is open in that the end application can fulfill any task or function – but the designer must be able to convince the client that there is a need or desire by the target market to justify further financial investment.

I need to become familiar with the product we are developing an application for. There are several methods I have chosen in this instance and they are ranked in the chronological order they occurred though in reality there is flexibility in this.

• Look for promotional material from the manufacturer to get a feel for the intended functionality, target market and typical use of the product in addition to a technical specification outlining the integrated technological features. For example, the O2 Joggler is WiFi capable, can receive SMS messages and will play many audio and video file formats. Below is a YouTube video showing the original Joggler advert designed to outline its use and functionality in simple terms.
• When searching for further YouTube material from O2 I discovered an demonstration video that both shows the product in use and shows some of the interesting interactive features of YouTube that could be exploited in my own work. In this case the O2 video seems to be slightly ‘clunky’ as there are many options to choose from but none of them are covered in alot of detail.
• The product can easily be investigated by visiting an 02 store in most cities and towns, providing a hands-on demonstration. By trying out the O2 Joggler I can gain a feel for the way users may interact with the product in terms of ease of use, speed, tactile features, heat output, pleasure in use and assistance to a daily routine. Using the product should be a source of inspiration and food for thought for the designer – knowledge and experience of current phone and web technologies is very important to this process as they provide multiple lines of questioning related to what is possible and what will be possible in the near future.
• Read customer comments from the website, tech review sites and other sources. This should compliment the initial research and help highlight any areas of investigation or analysis that have been missed or need to be revisited. A poor designer uses tech reviews as the basis for the research whereas a good designer looks for experience of the product, knowledge of its capability and seeks others opinion. Joggler examples include: MiniReviews, PC Advisor and PC Pro. It may seem a little odd that I am not refering to phone related websites but the O2 Joggler performs more in line with a simple PDA system and the interviews indicated are only design to provoke design questions thought.
• View competitors products to see what functionality has been added. The most obvious examples to my mind would be the iPhone with its large fanatical fanbase of users, constant evolution and support for ground breaking, design led applications. Try out the competitors products and ask yourself what sort of features really appeal.
• Monitor technology sites such as Electronista.com where there are constant updates related to technological innovation, roll out of new systems such as 4G phone networks, improved 3G data speeds and predictions as to what technology will be like in the near future.

Detailed Questions

There should immediately be a variety of questions regarding the style, technology and programming of the device as well as some test statements related to expectations. When a brief is presented to me I will often ‘test the water’ by explaining my perception of the design brief, how I will conduct myself during the process by estimating how long each phase would take based upon previous experience and where I would need assistance from the client or other skills. I would also test the client by suggesting that “the project will have concluded when we are….” [finished testing the website? taking delivery of the final printed product? preparing for print?]. A designer is able to make a full assessment of the task and its potential pitfalls [and account for these in planning] if they effectively complete this stage.

In this instance, having tried out the 02 Joggler I would want to ask the client some questions and check some of my assumptions – so in this situation, if I was a student working on the project, I would ask the project tutor the following:

• It is presumed that the style of the new application should follow the style and colour scheme of existing Joggler applications.

Not strictly true, O2 are looking for good ideas in terms of graphics and application ideas. I want designers to feel free to experiment with layout, iconography and style. O2 products do have a style and scheme but we can address this where necessary in further development phases. Don t worry about it for the moment.

• Are there any limitations to the inclusion of new technologies and ideas related to new phone technologies such as Bluetooth 2.0 EDR, GPS and other hardware / software developments? The current Joggler hardware would not allow some of these features to be integrated without redevelopment

Again, lets see what you come up with – sky’s the limit in the first instance. O2 can look at requirements for a new product if they take any of these further.

• Is it important to maintain the image of the Joggler being primarily a product for the kitchen? With the target market aimed at housewives or house husbands who need to keep track of their kids and generally weekly activities?

O2 have spent some time marketing the product as such, so let’s stick to that unless you have any inspiration that creates some strong reasoning to market the product in a different way.

• What sort of deadline and time limit are set for the project?

You have 10 hours studio time with support and other personal development time to create an idea, develop this and present a non-linear flash presentation. Put as much additional time of you own in but remember to balance graphics with a reasonable representation of functionality – the brief demands a reasonable level of both.

• What do you expect the final presentation to be like? What media types do you expect to see?

I’m expecting a Flash design that plays from a browser such as Internet Explorer or Firefox, along with your sketches to see how ideas have developed.