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

[Christopher Fahey]

Jared wrote:
> 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.

That's funny, I've always heard the opposite!

We work almost exclusively with fixed-price/fixed scope projects, but
clients still always want to know exactly what they're getting for the money
(the "fixed scope") besides of course the finished web site with the
features we agreed to. They want to know, for example, "How many times will
I get to provide feedback on the designs", and "What can I show to convince
my boss, 25% of the way through the project, that the design we chose is
going to work, so s/he doesn't demand radical changes 75% of the way
through?"

I wish fixed price was more of a black box, like ordering a wedding cake or
having your car pinstriped, but the fact is that we are selling our
collaboration and our process as much as we're selling the product we end up
delivering.


> 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. :

I was actually speaking about the fact that lots of design shops read UIE's
public writings and materials and use them to inform their internal
development processes. We do, all the time! I guess we're not paying
customers, but we value your products.

<logrolling>Thanks, too, for the kind words about Behavior!</logrolling>

-Cf

Christopher Fahey
____________________________
Behavior
biz: http://www.behaviordesign.com
me: http://www.graphpaper.com