At the beginning of any project, before any design or development work starts, can sometimes be the toughest part of a project. This is where communication between vendor and client needs to be extremely effective in trying to map out what it will take to get a project done, aka, problem solving.

One of the tough things is trying to find out what a client wants in a project. From our standpoint, we’re trying to get as many answers out of the client as possible. We’ve come to realize that at the start of projects, clients either aren’t sure what they want, or know what they want but just don’t know how to communicate it our terms. This is the challenge of starting off projects. We normally send out a long questionnaire asking tons of questions about the clients’ business. It’s a must that we dig deep to see what needs to change about a clients’ business.

One of the keys to effective project planning is staying focused on the problem. In other words, plan how you want to solve the problem. Early project planning should not involve conversations on what colors you like in a site, or the technology that needs to be used, because at that point it doesn’t matter. What matters is drilling down the business problems so we can help solve them through design.

If you are a client of a designer, make sure that you are being asked tons of questions at the start of a project. Your designer should be challenging you to think of aspects of your business that you maybe haven’t thought of before. Designers are problem solvers, and of course, we want to know what’s great about your business too. But we’re not trying to fix the great, we want to fix the problems, and that’s what we’re experts at.