Website Redesign Projects and Dinner Parties

Website redesign projects, whether large or small, involve many players from the client to the project team, and often with competing priorities. One of the most important people who are often left out of this equation are the end users. While most projects I take on involve some level of research and user testing, it’s not uncommon for those  research outcomes and recommendations to be overridden by a client’s competing priorities and designing solutions that reflect their needs, often to the detriment of their users and ultimately their company and website goals.

One analogy I like to make, at the very beginning of a redesign project, is that a website redesign project is not unlike preparing a dinner party for a group of guests. Consider the following. 

If I follow a meat-based diet because that’s what I enjoy and what I’m most comfortable with, then there’s nothing wrong with that since I’m cooking a meal only for myself. However, what if I was planning a dinner party for 6 people? Let’s say 3 of my guests are vegetarian; then clearly a roast beef dinner is not an option. But the choice of meal is not really what the focus should be; although it is an important consideration. So what exactly should the focus be?

Using the dinner party analogy I would ask the following: At my highest aspiration, what is my primary goal for this dinner party? The answers may range from, “I hope my guests enjoy the meal” or “I hope they enjoy the wine choice.” These are all valid goals, but they are mere component parts of a bigger picture. That bigger picture, and primary goal, is that a delightful experience is had by all, guests and host. Everyone measures their experience in different ways, but the common denominator is the value of the shared experience.

This is also the tipping point of where my primary goals meet with measuring success and where that success comes from. If we agree on the above dinner party analogy we quickly see that the measure of success derives not solely from my efforts, but largely come from the delightful, shared experience of my dinner guests (eg. the users). This is often a difficult argument for clients to parse and is largely responsible for why clients design for themselves. Often clients fail to realize that their goals and user goals are not, and should not, be mutually exclusive.

The takeaway here is our role is not limited to solving complex design or business challenges, they must also encompass effectively communicating and breaking down complex UX best practices that we take for granted.

With competing priorities, busy schedules, tight timelines and limited resources it’s often very easy for stakeholders to lose sight of the end user in the redesign process. Remember that UX, unlike the visceral and tactile experience of UI design, is an abstract concept to most stakeholders. Simple storytelling devices that boil things down to a shared language and relatable experiences (eg. a dinner party) is one of the most effective ways of circumnavigating UX jargon and an effective way of establishing trust and consensus with clients on your next website redesign project.