Design = customers. Consulting = clients
Design is what you do to shape the experience of a customer within a business.
Consulting is what you do to make clear your design to your client, according to its own ways.
Designers fail to explain. Consultants fail to shape
Just designers often fail to convince their clients, because they insist in speak the user language. Not the business jargon that clients understand.
Just consultants do no good: only powerpoints and time billing. Not a real blueprint to work on and make the real stuff.
So, for instance, a designer use to insist to marketing people that a form must be short, for the user’s convenience. But marketing people need huge amount of data. Good idea badly sold.
And a consultant will produce a thick slide deck, explaining why the clients idea is a really good idea. But not a faintest clue on how to nail it down to reality.
An example
It could have been a better idea to tell marketing people that short forms end up in better sales ratio conversion, and that you can gather data easily from actual customers.
And it could be a better approach to pair each slide to a wireframe.
Do both jobs
After many years considering myself a designer doomed to consulting, I have ended up realizing one thing:
When you are working for big fat companies, you need to do both jobs. If you really want to deliver.
0 comments
