A disaster has just happened on a project I’m on.  We were wrapping up wireframes and were intending to do a quick round of comps based on those wireframes to test with users. Take the ego out of it by getting unbiased feedback.  This would save time and money and get us to our goal faster.  Instead we have become mired in client revisions based on suppositions of what the user will think.  Blast!

This could have been avoided by strong-arming the test-first approach.  Instead we crumpled and offered a sneak-peak.  Initial feedback was entirely about nomenclature instead of the intended purpose of establishing color palette, typography, texture, layout, etc…  But overnight the feedback become a shower of “The user won’t know what to click…” and “The user won’t understand [it's] active.”

There’s a lesson here.

On a project I’m currently working on, we brought a couple of client stakeholders on user interviews.  We also involved them in the initial design concept phase as we were drawing ideas up on whiteboards.  This has turned these few stakeholders into allies in all of our meetings.  It’s so awesome to hear one of your clients answer other people on their team by saying “What I heard during the customer interviews was….”

I’ve also seen the reverse happen.  When there’s no client participation in the interview process, they dismissed the research findings whenever it contradicted their individual notions or assumptions.

Involving the client in user interviews builds trust in the process.  Involving the client in the creative effort coming out of those interviews builds their trust in the designer.