Anyone who has worked as a freelancer or in an agency has a horror story or two involving the proverbial client from hell. But as Paul Boag will tell you, the client is not always to blame. Clients are not designers, and designers are, in turn, not clients, so it’s in both parties best interest to work in harmony.
It seems like designers and agencies are getting clients more involved in the process which is a good thing. However we can always do more, get them more involved and more importantly get their users (or potential users) involved. A client needs to be involved from the very start. There’s really no good reason they should not be totally in the loop on their project, unless they choose not to be, which probably means they don’t quite care enough about the project and it’s already on track to fail. It’s not that a good designer can’t put together a great design or website without the clients input, but what kind of legs will it have when it comes time to maintaining and keeping on top of it?
The web is evolving past all the pretty bells and whistles (some of it anyway) and moving towards something more meaningful. We, as designers and developers, should be involving these owners of the web in the process and perpetuate this (r)evolution.
