[Sigia-l] Pricing the Design Process (was "Testing your own sites")

[Jared M. Spool]

On Feb 4, 2007, at 8:23 PM, Christopher Fahey wrote:

> Basically, if it takes time, it is charged for. (Of course,  
> regardless of
> the client's budget we will work our asses off within the timeframe  
> to make
> things great!)

Ah, the beauty of the fixed-price project. We just need to break you  
from this time & materials thing. That, my son, is the root of all  
your problems.


>> But it's not my world and I won't claim that
>> I understand how the sausages are made.
>
> I really appreciate your candor, Jared. But I am a little surprised  
> that you
> don't know more about how a design shop works, considering that a  
> great deal
> of your customers probably work in design shops.

As probably won't surprise you, design shops rarely hire us to help  
with their issues. Our clients are mostly people who hire design  
shops then wonder why things aren't working out. :)

Don't be so surprised. I'm betting you don't know much about how our  
shop works either.

> Every little "best practice" in the user experience design process  
> (stuff you write about all the time) costs money, money that a  
> client doesn't always want to pay.

What's intriguing is you give them a choice.

> IMHO budgetary issues are 90% of the reason why some sites are  
> better than others, not a lack of education or understanding of the  
> value of the practices themselves.

It's all about the Benjamins...

> For example, *all* of my clients agree that usability testing is a  
> fabulous
> idea, but only some them have the budget to pay for it. They can  
> pay for a
> day of paper testing or a month of lab testing, but the basic rule  
> of thumb
> is that if they don't pay for it, we won't do it. We price projects  
> down to
> the day, and even down to the hour, and sometimes stuff one might  
> think is a
> "given" falls off the table as we work with clients to fit costs  
> into their
> tight budgets.

Maybe this is endemic to the design trade, but it sounds like you  
charge for the activity, not for the result. If you charged for the  
result, then the activities float out in the wash.

Interestingly, the few design shops we *do* work with have this  
results-oriented approach and, coincidentally, do considerable user  
research on almost every project.

>
> This doesn't just apply to design shops. Within a large enterprise,  
> much of this is also true.

Ah, now you're getting into *my* area of expertise. It doesn't happen  
as often as you might think. There are other reasons testing doesn't  
happen, but it's not because of the daily cost.

As I said, it's not my world and I don't pretend to know all the  
dynamics involved. I'm sure you do the best you can within the  
constraints you're in. (I've heard excellent things about Behavior  
and the work you guys do.) So, I would not take any of this  
discussion particularly seriously.

Jared