Before we start, please do not feel bad if you ever asked this question to a designer or even to me, I can understand that companies, specially startups, are under a budget, and managing costs is key.  It is a fair question and I am writing this post in attention to you.

How much does design cost? A question with many possible answers.

In the next weeks I will try to include all the possible considerations that might get involve in to answering this question.  This excessive is meant to give clients and potential clients better tools to understand design estimates, choose providers and have a grounded conversation with your design professional of choice about what they are looking for and expect to get from them.  Lets start by understanding the context in which this question will be asked.

Context is important

If you ask me, “how much design services does cost?”  It is not the same question as “how much professional design services in Calgary does cost?”.  If you also ask “how much professional web design in Calgary for a small blog with five pages and customized illustrations, hand-coded, with SEO optimized content and to be done in two weeks does costs?”  Well, now things are getting real, and it is possible to get a down to earth approach.

Just trying to figure out how much design costs without pointing out specifics can make the results trivial, and of course you will get extremely big variations in an estimate, from $500 to $50,000.  I know that when it comes about money, there is an important gut reaction; you can compare two estimates and possibly find this range in prices. What is going on?  The expensive company tried to rip you off? The cheap one does not know what they are doing? Possibly, but most of the times, that is not the case.

It is pretty much like looking for a place to stay at night, you can choose between a one star hostel in Tijuana and five stars all-inclusive resort in Cancun. At the end of the day, both places will have a bed, but somewhere in between that range you will see that the results and the expected experience is not the same.  Let’s say, there both will give you memories you will not forget, but only one will come with bed bug bites.

Now I made you think about the context of your proposal, please do not hesitate to contact Berumen Design.  I will do my best to clarify any question or follow up any comments that might lead you to a better understatement of this subject.

Follow up next week to know about the internal and external factors involved in your proposal.

Overview

A well designed user interface is comprehensible and controllable, helping users to complete their work successfully and efficiently, and to feel competent and satisfied. Effective user interfaces are designed based on principles of human interface design. The principles listed below are consolidated from a wide range of published sources (Constantine & Lockwood, 1999; Cooper & Reimann, 2003; Gerhardt-Powals, 1996; Lidwell, Holden & Butler, 2003; Nielsen, 1994; Schneiderman, 1998; Tognazzini, 2003) and are based on a long history of human-computer interaction research, cognitive psychology, and design best practices.
Usefulness

Value: The system should provide necessary utilities and address the real needs of users.
Relevance: The information and functions provided to the user should be relevant to the user’s task and context.

Consistency

Consistency and standards: Follow appropriate standards/conventions for the platform and the suite of products. Within an application (or a suite of applications), make sure that actions, terminology, and commands are used consistently.
Real-world conventions: Use commonly understood concepts, terms and metaphors, follow real-world conventions (when appropriate), and present information in a natural and logical order.

Simplicity

Simplicity: Reduce clutter and eliminate any unnecessary or irrelevant elements.
Visibility: Keep the most commonly used options for a task visible (and the other options easily accessible).
Self-evidency: Design a system to be usable without instruction by the appropriate target user of the system: if appropriate, by a member of the general public or by a user who has the appropriate subject-matter knowledge but no prior experience with the system. Display data in a manner that is clear and obvious to the appropriate user.

Communication

Feedback: Provide appropriate, clear, and timely feedback to the user so that he sees the results of his actions and knows what is going on with the system.
Structure: Use organization to reinforce meaning. Put related things together, and keep unrelated things separate.
Sequencing: Organize groups of actions with a beginning, middle, and end, so that users know where they are, when they are done, and have the satisfaction of accomplishment.
Help and documentation: Ensure that any instructions are concise and focused on supporting the user’s task.

Error Prevention and Handling

Forgiveness: Allow reasonable variations in input. Prevent the user from making serious errors whenever possible, and ask for user confirmation before allowing a potentially destructive action.
Error recovery: Provide clear, plain-language messages to describe the problem and suggest a solution to help users recover from any errors.
Undo and redo: Provide “emergency exits” to allow users to abandon an unwanted action. The ability to reverse actions relieves anxiety and encourages user exploration of unfamiliar options.

Efficiency

Efficacy: (For frequent use) Accommodate a user’s continuous advancement in knowledge and skill. Do not impede efficient use by a skilled, experienced user.
Shortcuts: (For frequent use) Allow experienced users to work more quickly by providing abbreviations, function keys, macros, or other accelerators, and allowing customization or tailoring of frequent actions.
User control: (For experienced users) Make users the initiators of actions rather than the responders to increase the users’ sense that they are in charge of the system.

Workload Reduction

Supportive automation: Make the user’s work easier, simpler, faster, or more fun. Automate unwanted workload.
Reduce memory load: Keep displays brief and simple, consolidate and summarize data, and present new information with meaningful aids to interpretation. Do not require the user to remember information. Allow recognition rather than recall.
Free cognitive resources for high-level tasks: Eliminate mental calculations, estimations, comparisons, and unnecessary thinking. Reduce uncertainty.

Usability Judgment

It depends: There will often be tradeoffs involved in design, and the situation, sound judgment, experience should guide how those tradeoffs are weighed.
A foolish consistency…: There are times when it makes sense to bend or violate some of the principles or guidelines, but make sure that the violation is intentional and appropriate.

Ok, lets say you do not know anybody in the Design community in Calgary, and you do not want to hire your cousin which happen to read a book about Design and is “between jobs” to do your design project.  You are aware of your design needs, and you start searching Google for Design Company in Calgary.  You might end up with thousands of results, but still it is hard to figure out which one of the options available may be the best for you.  No worries, we are going to give you good hints for finding the best designer. It does not matter if you are looking for an experienced graphic designer, web design studio, industrial design company or ux design freelancer, the same principles apply to all of them.

Why ? Because we care about you, even if you are not our client.

This metaphor will help us to get started.

Let’s say you want to buy a new car. 

I know it is not the kind of choices you do every day but you may understand that this kind of decisions will have small and big repercussions in your future.  It is probable that the decision-making process would go like this.  What are my needs?  What it can do for me? What it would say about me?  And finally, how much can I invest on it?

If you love Mini Coopers but you have fit your five teenager boys on it, chances are this car would not be a good option according to your needs.  Some cars are more useful than others, a huge pick up truck would be a good off road option, when the roads are frozen and you need to load big heavy boxes. Now let’s say you are an ecology activist, then buying a Hummer would come even close to the image you have about yourself.  Imagine you really want a Ferrari, and you are trying to convince the concessionary to get a half price discount. If you get it, congratulations, but it is more than likely they would not take it seriously.

Now, how this explanation is applied to find the right designer for me?

The Designers 4P’s:

Problem, Portfolio, Personality, Price.

P1 = Problem: What are my design needs?

What are your needs?  This especially tricky, and it is a common mistake to confuse the solution with the problem.  Let’s go back to the car example. Whenever you say you need a car, what you are actually saying is that you need is a solution for your private transportation problem, a car happens to be way to solve it, but a bicycle could also be a viable solution.  Before asking for a logo, web design, business card, UI, 3d model, you name it… step back for a second, think about your strategy, how this project will bring you a ROI, who is your audience and what do you want to say.  Chances are you might be jumping into conclusions.

Make sure the design companies or designers you are interviewing can offer alternatives (a car or a bicycle) based on a reasonable understanding of your business.

P2 = Portfolio: What this design professional can do for me?

The basic rule of thumb, “No Portfolio = No Designer”. In the Design World, who you are, is what you are doing, did and are going to do.  A good design portfolio has to be able to clearly tell you the past, present and future of the company.

Small hint, ask for the ugly projects, the ones they do not want to show to you.  We all have our projects where circumstances are less than optimal.  That presentation where the clients sent all the files two hours before the meeting, that day all the computers in the studio died, that occasion when the creative muse just did not show up.  A design professional lives this kind of things everyday, but what makes him or her a good designer is being able to face these situations, take the most out of them and deliver a good service to you.

P3 = Personality: What the design would have to say about me?

The bound between a client and a professional designer is a relationship after all, and it follows the same patterns as any of them.  Sometimes the romance last forever, like a match made in heaven; other times the story does not have a happy ending.  Some personalities are not meant to hang around together, not even work.

Ask the company you are meeting how would they describe themselves?  Be sure they are saying who they are, and not trying to please you and tell you what you want them to be.  At the end, you do not want to end up driving a Hummer to your Green Peace meeting, right?  Choose the right designer for you. If you feel you can deal with them, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, from this day forward until the end of the project do you part? If not, speak now or forever hold your peace.

P4 = Price: How much can I invest on Design?

Money, oh, that small detail.  A good Design Company should be able to put a very well defined price policy right in front of you. Be careful of the free design with… deals,  Ej. “Free Design with business cards”. It would be pretty much like a plastic surgeon saying free beauty with nose job.

Remove from your vocabulary the words “cheap” or “expensive”. You are in business, you are looking for ROI (Return on Investment).  If you are going to put one dollar in design, be sure the designer will be able to bring two back.  If a designer cannot figure out ways to convince you he will bring money from that investment back to your pocket, basically the results you will get are decoration.

Design is one of the fastest and most effective ways to create value for you company.   A Ferrari is because of the time and dedication designers put on make it a Ferrari.

What if you are now able to tell the P4’s just from the company’s website?

Then it is time to go for a coffee.  A good designer in Calgary is for sure addicted to caffeine and warm places.  In my case, I am always looking for a excuse for a large Americano with lots of cream lots of sugar.   Contact me.