we are: London

Love him or hate him.

It all comes down to one single, tangible factor, which marks out the good from the bad; soul.

The reason for the Clarkson tribute on the left is this weeks Sunday Times Motoring article on an Aston Martin which sees Clarkson pitting it against design perfection in the shape of an Audi R8 V10.

And to save you the read, the Audi is just too perfect, where as the Aston has soul, something that can’t be created by following set rules, but comes from the heart of those involved and is a direct result of the creator’s passion.

All of which brings us nicely to the argument that has raged on since the start of website design; who is best placed to create the perfect site?

The Good, the bad and the ugly.

Let’s go back to basics and look at who the usual suspects are, in the red corner we have “visual designers” (brand and marketing) and in the blue corner we have “interaction designers” (user centred).

Whilst visual designers have a wealth of ability and passion, it is often focused to heavily on making something look good and the risk of making the same, beautiful creation completely unusable.

Now wheel in the interaction designers, who’s passions lie in the creation of the perfect experience, through usability testing, prototyping and more testing. However, there is a strong argument against all of this testing and refining as it can just blunt a sharp, creative idea, making the end result more function than form.

Experience is all, or read Experiential

For years I thought experiential was about experiencing a design, but it’s not it’s about experience, and this where soul comes from.

An experienced designer is passionate about the look and the effectiveness of a design and ensures their soul is applied to everything they do.

An excellent example of what not to do is a site we reviewed a while back that seemingly missed both design and ease of use steps during it’s development and almost certainly skipped public testing.

Help me help you

If you want to avoid the common pitfalls of digital procurement, ensuring your acgency has soul, then follow these easy steps:

• Check potential agencies have a proven user centred design methodology as well as a creative portfolio
• Ask for CVs of key staff and make sure they are guaranteed to be on the project
• Meet the team and chat to them about what they think is good and bad
• Don’t ever feel that it’s not your right to ask questions
• Ask for clarification on every point until it’s clear
• Remember you’re the client and paying the bills

If you would like to know more then give me a call or drop me a note and we’ll take you through our experiences and see how we can help.

Chris global usability testing, information architecture, interface design, internet research, market research, usability design, user centred design, user interface Design, e-commerce, Internet, Mobile, research, usability