75 Options To Choose From When Just One Good Recommendation Would Do
I’m always watching the various design showcase blogs and other sources of information for the latest and greatest in web design and development. It’s a lot of fun to see the newest techniques and showcases of work. It can be quite inspirational.
What I’m having a problem with is the number of sites and resources out there that seem to do little else than grab a bunch of links to various things and then publish that as content.
At first, it’s fun. Ten New Ways to Display Form Fields. Twenty Fresh Web Designs that Work on the iPhone. Forty Marketing Strategies that Attract Young People. Sixty Hot Trends in Clicking on Things.
So what?
Anyone can go out there and find options. I don’t care too much about options. I care about solutions. Don’t tell me the ten ways for doing something and leave it at that. Add some value to it. Tell me about the ten ways, how they are different, and in what circumstance each option might be the best choice. Give me a reason to care about all of these options you are giving me. I want these sites I read and people I follow on Twitter to be editors for me, not just aggregators of every other thing they find on a topic out there.
When you think about this, it makes it clear who has good information and who just appears to have good information. Use your knowledge and expertise to make decisions and select great options for yourself and your clients. If you’re giving people options, clearly explain why there are choices to make, what the differences are between then, and potential trade-offs. Also, offer your rationale for selecting one. This shows you’re paying attention, have expertise to offer, and have done some work.
Without an informed opinion, you’re the Yellow Pages, not a personal recommendation.
Brian,
I see this as a valid critique of the creative market. There are several right and wrong ways to accomplish web and graphic design goals, but what should matter is client service.
There are plenty of small media shops nationwide and even in Omaha that produce stellar content, but little of it has a strategy behind it — other than it looks good.
There are two traps of choice: 1) We stick to what we know and risk riding the tail end of trend or 2) We adopt too early and the user experience suffers due to unfamiliarity, bugs, etc.
It’s a constant struggle to navigate between the two extremes.
Comment by Sean Bryan — February 23, 2010 @ 2:53 pm
Sean – I couldn’t agree more. It’s riskier to make a decision and advise your client than to lay out a lot of options and “let” them choose. I’m seeing so many lists of options getting churned out lately that they all have little value to me now except when I’m looking for some list of things to evaluate for my own use or review.
Then I make informed decisions for my clients, with their business goals and interests in mind. Hopefully, we do it right and then everyone wins. Shame on me if I make the client choose from 10 options and they pick the one they like just because it looks good yet yields poor results.
I believe we can achieve the goal we’ve always had of works great + looks great if given the chance.
Comment by Brian Wetjen — February 24, 2010 @ 10:21 am