Can the rules of decent design in fact be broken without jeopardizing success? It is happening more times than people like to admit. Still, it is generally better to go ahead and make sure that your are up to spec whenever possible.

One of the integral parts of web design that isn’t as creative as the others is business: the money side of things. As a part-time freelancer and full-time web developer, I sometimes work on small parts of the overall project: wireframes, for example. Rarely does this include me in conversations about how the project will succeed moneywise. This is changing, however. I’m having more conversations every day about bottom-line results. Accountability may be coming soon to a project near you.

There is a tension between what designers can affect and what we have no control over. Because we can’t always change the ultimate success or failure of a project, we often dismiss the success or failure as completely outside the work we’ve done. I think this is a short-sighted, dangerous way to approach design. If we consider our role as designers outside of the success of the project, then we’ve discounted the value that we could potentially bring to the table. That puts us on bad footing for future projects, where we might be asked for concrete examples of how our design helped a project succeed. On the other hand, we shouldn’t take all the credit when the project turns out well…. Source: bokardo.com/

Tags: money, project, wireframes, jeopardizing success, accountability