Smashing Magazine
Transcript: Engaging Your Clients Be what you want your client to be, if you want them to be honest then be honest. If you want them to be passionate, show your passion. They may not immediately react to your enthusiasm, but they will feel it and overtime it will reinforce your efforts. This is client Relations 101 and should NOT be ignored! Research and Customer Insight: The Objective Problem-Solving Approach Types of research methods to use on your customers Ethonography: a research method from the social sciences that involves field research and upclose observation in the user's environment. Heuristic Evaluation: a form of usability inspection, in which usability specialists judge whether each element of a user interface follows a list of established usability heuristics. Focus groups, surveys, prototyping, interviews and more. These all yield valuable data, and from this data we can build persuasive artifacts to convince the client of strategies that have a high probability of success in the real world. How do you pick an idea that will succeed? Look at community websites Where your target audience hangs out. (Facebook, Twitter) Take Notes write down all of you a-ha moments! ideas pop up and then disappear so take notes and go over these notes in a few weeks so it could maybe lead you to your next breakthrough. Assessing the Market Now that you have a few product ideas, how do you know which one is your best?? Market size and addressable market The bigger the market the higher the potential payoff -- Total Addressable Market: the total amount of revenue you can expect to capture 2 ways to calculate this number Top down Bottom up In the End, It's All YOU Building your own venture might be a little intimidating, but it's an amazing experience! Reducing the risk by doing research is an important first step! A strong belief in your product will help you get through difficult times Beleive in your abilities and in the product and learn from your mistakes!! When making an illustration on photoshop First sketch it out on paper- "Drawing is visual thinking" Add volume to the sketch to show where textures will be Don't forget to Research! What textures will work? What colors will work? Next Step... Craft your own brushes to make different textures for Photoshop Then scan all your brush textures into Photoshop Select a color Palette Finally, paint your picture with your colors and different brush textures The first thing every client wants when you are doing work for them is TRUST, then openness, and passion. Clients that deal with large agencies tend to place their trust in the big brand names of these shops. Freelance designers and small agencies do not always inspire the confidence in clients like the large shops do, which means that trust has to be built!! Customer Journey Maps Graphs that demostrate a user's level of confidence and patience when performing various touch points in an interaction flow. Data is provided from an interview where the user is guided through a certain task. As they move through the flow, we ask them how they feel at key intervals. The map helps by getting a visual representation of the emotional state of their customers, the clients suddenly understands how important planning the user experience is to the product development process. Do You Want to Build a Software Product? Getting a win-win is when you deliver solutions that address the client's business problem. Both parties need to handle tension objectively, putting aside personal feelings to complete the goal. A win-win transpires through actions, research and delivery! Clients and Freelance Designers Effective User Research and Transforming the Minds of Clients Mixing up Illustration Actual and Potential Demand Getting a Win-Win Use search engines Google the problem that you want to solve! If you find little mention of the problem, then either your keywords are wrong or the problem is not as big as you thought. Staking out your audience Read what people are saying about the problem. Get feedback from your audience!! Check out the competition look at the competition's websites, their mentions in traditional media like news websites and blogs, and their presence in social media. Ask: Are there major players in y our market already? How hard would it be to compete against them?
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