We speak human

Design by Committee Kills Originality

09 Feb, 2012 | 0 comments

Too many cooks spoil the food

Wife to Husband: Honey, I am cooking Chicken Marengo, join us early today. Soon after her mother and sister-in-law join her in kitchen and start making recommendation to add this and that.

Some more garlic? Some more olive?

Ideas killed and a big hammer on creativity.

End result: Food that no one loves.

Similarly, design by committee is nail in the coffin of original design concepts.

Everybody has an opinion about design and when design is tweaked to satisfy everybody's concerns, it creates the design that committee loves but fails to excite target audience.

This type of design does not create buzz or brand loyalty or generate a feeling of satisfaction.

Nothing is wrong with consultation and seeking people response about design. Try to limit the number of people making design decisions. For superior results, this should be just the designer and the website owner, and often website ownership is with marketing department.

Focus on your target audience

First and foremost, website design should appeal to you. If it doesn't ask your designer to produce another shot.

Soon after, you may start worrying about what your boss will think about the design but never worry. Your enthusiasm will persuade him to stick to it.

Getting buy-in from across the organization and making sure business objectives are reflected is a definite consideration. However, these responses should never be primary gauge for the success of a design.

Primary role of a website is to engage users while they consume information on your website. With this kind of engagement, you are endeavoring to create a positive emotional response. Means, job is nearly done.

While looking at the design, the most important question to ask "What will your target audience think?"

Provide broad feedback

Website owner: "change it to black and reduce spacing in paragraph"

Designer: "I thought I was the designer"

This happens when website owner pin points everything. To avoid this, provide broad feedback. The website owner should champion the needs of his users and the business rather than deciding how the design should work.

When you provide broader feedback based on your business objectives, you empower designer to make positive and bottom line savvy recommendations to improve the design.

Conclusion

Most designers have an extensive knowledge of color theory, grid systems, visual hierarchy and many other aspects of design. By getting heavily involved in the detail of design you are paying them to do nothing!

Comments (0)