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That’s true.
A lot of people, and it’s not just in the design industry, come across clients who are critical of their work. Including marketing, sales, medical…… “, many industry practitioners will encounter such clients in their work.
However, many people habitually use a retaliatory way to deal with their relationships. Finally, such anger is not easy for both sides to continue communication, and once or twice, it seems to win the upper hand, but it will eventually lead to a bottleneck in my career.
Because what you learn is that you don’t really use reason to convince the other person, you don’t communicate effectively with empathy. (To be clear, I’m not talking about communication, I’m talking about effective communication.)
It’s a confrontational way to get the other person to stop his behavior. You didn’t win.
As I always say, many things in the world are the same, and this problem is not a bad one, so let’s go over what the problem is.
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Steve Jobs once said something that many people in design or product development hold dear.
Customers don’t know what they want, he says.
This quote was inspired by Henry Ford, the founder of Ford.
If you asked a customer what kind of transportation they wanted, ford said, they would never say a car because at that time there were only horse-drawn carriages. Therefore, enterprises to innovate, do not listen to customers.
But Ford forgot that in the days of horses, customers knew exactly what they wanted even if they had never seen a car. What they need is a faster and easier way to get around.
As a merchant, you can provide him with faster and safer horses. Or give him a car.
Customers always know what they want to achieve, they just don’t know how to get there.
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In the process of communicating with clients, quite a few designers tend to make two mistakes. And it’s these two mistakes, or two inaccuracies, that ultimately lead you to lose your initiative. They end up overstepping their authority and telling you how to do your job.
Let’s go through them one by one.
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Number one: Never think about the client’s goals.
A lot of people have already mentioned this, but I decided to take a moment to say it again.
The client said he needed a poster. This is the customer standing in their own point of view to judge the conclusion.
The end was propaganda, the poster was the means.
As a qualified commercial designer, we should think more about how to use our own means to help customers achieve their goals.
Rather than simply telling the client that it looks this way or that way corny.
Seeing the example of red letters on a blue background in one of the answers in this question reminds me of a group of people I have met in my work. And, eight or nine years ago, I was one of those people.
They spend a lot of time and energy arguing that they are right, rather than whether someone else is right or not.
Even if Zhao Gao’s behavior is to test others, it is not because he is stupid enough to distinguish between deer and horses.
The client said that the blue lettering would stand out, he must have seen some kind of blue lettering design that made him feel very memorable. A qualified professional (I’m not even talking about a designer, I’m talking about a qualified professional) should first think about whether the customer has a reason for saying this, instead of being sarcastic and even taking the time to deliberately make things worse.
It may sound like a chicken soup, but we all have limited time and energy, and some people spend a lot of time trying to prove you’re wrong, not that your suggestion is a possibility. This mentality and behavior of finding the obvious point first and then looking for various arguments is a major killer of a person’s development.
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And the second point, in fact, very recessive, many people are easy to unknowingly say offend people, and still related to understanding the purpose of customers.
Many designers like to doubt the validity of the client’s choice of purpose. And they don’t have the skills to help customers make decisions.
This kind of person is actually quite common in our work. Expression for expression’s sake is their commonality.
The customer said, to do a version of the elevator poster. Designers immediately said, now the effect of elevator advertising is so poor, it is better to erect a yilabao at the entrance of the corridor.
However, this kind of designer doesn’t know that the client has done basic research and found that the average person in an office building will spend at least 180 seconds a day in an elevator.
When you are incompetent and try to overstep your authority to help the client make decisions, the client will overstep its authority to guide you in the design.
This is a communication backlash from the client, because in your self-professed professional conversation, your ignorance has been laid bare.
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So, in order to gain the respect of the client in the work.
First of all, know empathy, really understand the purpose of each customer request.
Don’t try to overstep your authority by saying things that reveal your abilities in order to show that you don’t have a wide range of knowledge.
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For convenience of view, all answers are within personal favorites (ENO [design] | ENO [and] with people), hope to help people in need.