And yet, when I finally show it to somebody, they find things I didn’t cover, and not things I didn’t think of either, things that floated, half-formed in the back of my mind that were never fully expressed. It’s not just a matter of going through a checklist, it’s also about listening and feeling your way through a kind of fog. You see shapes in the distance; it’s up to you to decide if they are important. You can feel your way around their edges, trying to get a sense of them. This is a skill.

The desire to do better is the first step. What comes after is an understanding of what better is. What would “better” look like?

Once the work is launched, it’s another story – even if they were to agree with incoming criticism, the prospect of going back to a client to say “we did this wrong” is an uninviting one.

I agree that criticism is rarely going to be about salvaging something.

[...] if an agency is making shoddy work, then the likelihood is that they’ll either realise and get their act together, or lose all their clients / talent and eventually go out of business.

This I’m not so sure about. It’s a sad fact maybe, but great work does not always equal success. Mediocre work sells if it’s marketed well.

My anxiety about this stems from the fact that what constitutes “great work” is not obvious. It’s very easy to be distracted by flashy graphic design, and it’s harder to communicate things like usability, accessibility, optimisations for speed and file size, and security. It’s our responsibility to educate clients about these things, but also sometimes to educate each other.

I remember some time ago a high profile web designer saying that criticism of web projects shouldn’t be done publicly, but should be given privately over a pint in the pub. But that doesn’t seem right to me. What if you’re not friends? Wouldn’t this criticism be taken almost as harshly?

I worry that average or even poor work will get praised out of politeness and set a bad example to the next wave of web designers and even affect client perceptions of good work, and I feel there needs to be some firm yet polite method of offering feedback.

Nothing more is required of the pupil, at first, than that he should conscientiously copy what the teacher shows him.

- Zen in the Art of Archery, Eugen Herrigel

It’s necessary to do the work first. And I’m beginning to think that more than that, it’s necessary to enjoy the work first. The work is the thing. The tips and the tricks, they are just dressing; they come from expertise they don’t lead to it. Even when people talk about the 10,000 hours it takes to master something, it’s as if they are saying “I just need to get these 10,000 hours out of the way and then I’ll be done”.

Some designers may like the idea of being an artist, of creating art, because the idea of art is somehow grander than the idea of being a craftsman. But when I need a chair, I need something that keeps my arse off the floor, I don’t want your re-interpretation of what it means to be elevated by four legs. Granted some people may make a better chair, a better-looking chair even, but you can easily distinguish those people by looking at the chairs they’ve made before. I don’t want an exploration of the idea of a chair, I want a solution to the problem of sitting at my desk.

A designer solves problems. And the problem is not “what’s the cutest shade of pink?” or “how big should I make my logo?”. For the average designer, these problems are practical and straightforward. How do I sell more widgets? How do I get more blog subscribers? But for the really great designers, the problems are deeper and more emotional. How do I make someone laugh? How do I create trust? How do I make a screen full of words and colours and shapes feel intimate?

Spec work doesn’t answer problems. It can’t. It doesn’t know you or your customers. It’s an explosion of colours and funky typefaces and drop shadows and gradients. It says: look at how many Photoshop tutorials I’ve read!

The convenience of spec work to the client is twofold. First of all, they know that the designer can produce work of a certain standard. But that’s what portfolios are for. Secondly, it gives them the illusion that they are choosing the best designer. They are deathly afraid of making a mistake, of being lumbered with work that doesn’t fit their needs and that makes them look out of touch, or dated, or boring.

And yet, that is exactly what they will avoid if they engage a designer in an ongoing process of collaboration. The design becomes an iterative, evolving masterwork and not a one-off afternoon’s doodling.

The benefit to the designer is that there is a chance that they will get paid. After all, someone has to get the job don’t they? This is the same thinking that gets people to play the lottery twice a week. Even if the odds of winning are higher than spontaneously bursting into flames, there is always a winner so why not me? And the more often I take part, the greater my chances right? Except none of these assumptions is true. And the only definite outcome is that the idea of design will be cheapened and misconstrued, not only to clients but to up and coming designers.

So that said, I’m making a to-do list app.

You see it occurred to me that a piece of paper can’t tell me to stop writing, but a web page can remind me that I need limits. This isn’t true of the web apps I’ve already used. I tend to add more and more things until the list is very long. The longer a list becomes, the less inclined I am even to look at it, never mind do any of the tasks. So it has to be short. Restrictively so.

Putting a deadline on things can be useful, but I find that I don’t feel any guilt when they zip by. So marking overdue items doesn’t change my behaviour. But I do like to split tasks into chunks – usually of about 30 minutes or an hour. So it might be good to only accept tasks that are substantial enough to warrant writing down but small enough that they can be completed easily within an afternoon.

So what I’m doing is making a to-do list that will work for me, not one that will necessarily work well for other people.

Why do so many web recruitment ads ask for gurus? CSS gurus, Rails gurus and so on. Gurus are fine, if you can get them, but where are the jobs for beginners? For intermediates?

A good indication that someone is using this term too loosely is when it is accompanied by a low salary offer. Why is someone who has transcendental knowledge in their field going to work for what you’re offering? Firms are bad at selling themselves, at the simple act of making an offer, often because they think they are in a seller’s market, but the true gurus are not scrabbling to take any offer.

One of the interesting parts of Zen Buddhism is Shoshin or Beginner’s Mind. This idea is that an expert will treat a subject very much like a beginner, with an open mind and an eagerness to learn. In this aspect, beginners can be as useful to a company as experts. In fact, an expert can be stuck in a routine way of thinking, resistant to new ideas and not the kind of person you want to hire.

In practice, recruitment is a kind of witchcraft, producing wildly unpredictable results. But it is worth thinking about the qualities and values you want to invest in and not be so quick to demand a high level of knowledge or experience.

(photo by Bhutan-360 on Flickr)

When I hear this word, the speaker usually means something else. It’s a lazy word, used when the reasons have not been fully thought out. It’s a word that needs to be expanded upon. Often it only means to act seriously, with serious intent. It is not childish, it is not fun. It indicates to others how seriously you take things. Companies that try to be professional without first figuring out what exactly that entails quickly become companies where it is not fun to work.

The idea we have in our heads of professionalism is a group of signals that indicate that someone can be trusted. But like any easily replicated mark, it’s not reliable. It’s just as easy to be taken in by someone in a t-shirt and jeans as someone in a suit.

Trust and reliability are built up over time, there is no shortcut. So think about what you are sacrificing when you try to be professional.

First of all, when you’re small, you’re agile. You can change quicker than the big company. When an organisation grows it has a lot invested in its existence, and risks start to look less enticing. So it starts to play safe, it relies on what has worked in the past, it gets choked up in its own bureaucracy.

Secondly, you’ve got creativity. There will always be the new. Creativity is about difference, newness or even just rearranging. Maybe Google dominates search, but what if search changes? Auction sites might find it hard to supplant eBay, but how about changing the nature of online auctions?

I’m not giving you solutions, because the answers are far from easy. But a solution is always possible.

When someone decides that they no longer want your services, it’s usually too late to do anything about it. What you can do, is act professionally and make the process of switching suppliers uncomplicated and swift.

A bureaucratic, unhelpful attitude does not reverse a bad opinion, it confirms it.

It’s also worth remembering that when customers leave, it can be because of budget, location and just not being a great fit with you or your company. If you make their final experience a negative one, they’re much less likely to recommend you to someone who could be your customer.