How-to Summary: Put as many stakeholders, departments and decision makers as possible into deciding what the website should be and then have lots of meetings.
As all designers do at one point or another, we question why the powers that be – clients, stakeholders, etc. make (what we think to be) bad choices when it comes to building a website for the company or brand. As well intentioned as the parties involved are, the idea that spreading the power out amongst all of the groups involved tends to muddle and often do more harm then good to the project. Several other designers and I were discussing this a while back and we happened to stumble on this interesting article on Fast Company’s website. The comments, coming from a number of different sources, were equally as interesting.
The biggest challenge to better design isn’t getting better designers. The problem is organizational, and the hub-and-spoke decision-making process that was originally created to slash bureaucracy–that is, to create more decentralized decisions and less hierarchy. But the overriding weakness, which design thinking makes manifest, is that good design is necessarily the product of a heavily centralized structure. Great design at places such as Apple isn’t about “empowering decision makers” or whatever that lame B-school buzzword is. It’s about awarding massive power and self-determination to those with the most cohesive vision–that is, the designers. Those are the people with the best idea of what customers want. That’s the essence of “design thinking.”
Public Company Website:
Mock Up Redesign:
Successful web application designers – 37signals have published an awesome book on how-NOT-to-make a sucky product. Although their core competency is in web apps this guide stretches across multiple disciplines. Their core philosophy – less people involved, instead of meetings get more actual work done, and focus on that one core thing the customer wants and build, tweak and iterate until it is there.
