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Speculative Design
4:08 with Paul BoagWhen should you do speculative design for a potential client? Paul says "never... well, almost never."
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So one of the things you might be wondering about as you put your proposal together
0:00
is whether you should do some design mock-ups to show the prospective client.
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In fact, you might have even been asked to provide them
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as part of the tendering process.
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So should you be doing this kind of speculative design work?
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Should you be putting all of the effort in up front,
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without knowing whether you're going to win the work or not?
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Well, my answer is a clear one.
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No, you shouldn't.
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Well, almost never, anyway.
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There may be occasions—okay, if Coca-Cola came to me
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with a multi-million dollar project and asked me
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to do some speculative design work, then maybe I would be tempted.
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But generally speaking, it's just a bad idea.
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And not just because of the amount of work you have to put into it.
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Ultimately, it costs the client money as well.
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What? you might wonder. They're not paying for it.
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So how does it cost the client any money?
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Well, think of it like this, okay?
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Let's say a client comes to you and asks for some speculative design work,
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and you do it for them, but you don't win the project.
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Then you get another client come to you.
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Also asks you for speculative design work,
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which you do, and then you win the project.
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So that's two pieces of speculative design work that you've done.
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You've not been paid for those, so how are you going to recover the cost?
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Because you have to. Your business has to be profitable.
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The way that you recover the cost is you build it in to the project you've won.
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So the project that you've won—the client has paid for their own
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speculative design work, but they've also paid
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for the speculative design work for the client you lost.
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So it's costing them a lot of money, because you won the project.
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But that's not the only reason.
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It's not just about cost here.
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There's lots of other reasons why you shouldn't be doing speculative design.
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For start, design is a process.
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You don't go into a room and sprinkle fairy dust, and this magical website appears
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out of it that looks good, you say it's perfect.
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There's a lot of discussion and conversation and backwards and forwards
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with the client. How can you do that before you've actually won the work?
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Any design you produce isn't going to take into account that process.
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Also, design requires a good understanding of the business you're working with.
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There's a lot of business analysis that goes into it.
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What are their business objectives? Who are their users?
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All of that kind of stuff. Again, those kinds of conversations don't happen before they've signed on the dotted line.
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So again, any design you work to produce up front
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is not going to cover that kind of stuff.
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Design should be a collaborative process between you and your clients.
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And that collaboration just cannot happen before that relationship
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has been established, before there's a contract in place.
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At the end of the day, speculative design work can be nothing more than showmanship.
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It's nothing more than showing off that you produce pretty graphics.
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But somebody can look at your portfolio to see that.
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It can never be a true representation of what the final website should be.
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And although explaining that to the client is difficult,
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in a lot of cases you will actually get respect for doing so.
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We've been in situations where we've actually won work
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because we said, very up front, that we won't do speculative design work.
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And we've explained why.
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The client has been so impressed at our explanations,
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that they've immediately been cynical about any other web design agency
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that does speculative design work for them.
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If the client decides that they want that, and if you refuse
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and you lose the client, then ultimately it's a great way
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of weeding out undesirable clients that are going to end up being
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very difficult when you actually do the final work.
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