Smashing eBook_ Professional Workflow for Web Designers - Luke Reimer [6]
I began my career like many web designers – as a young freelancer who built his skills and experience over many years. This helped to pay my way through school, and I concurrently started working on a corporate career by weaving connections and contacts to provide myself with as many options as possible. The freelance business had grown to the point where we were a small team of 3-5 individual freelancers and/or subcontracted agencies for specific purposes. I then accepted a position in an international corporation and for several years I worked either full time or part time, selectively keeping the freelance (and writing) work alive on the side. This has provided a triad of experience; individual freelance work, small web business administration, and corporate web design – each for several years. Now I would like to share what I’ve learned.
The Corporate Environment
Working in an office building is much more rigid and standardized than a home office, which means early mornings and serious coffee intake – but the benefits of standardized working hours and project discipline. Security badges, checkpoints, confidentiality, supervision, and the mass of other people make it quite a change. Keeping large teams on track requires a lot of dedication, motivation and tolerance to frustration. Making sure everyone is on board and up to date, planning and handling projects and customers, identifying bottlenecks and issues, as well as channeling the manifold client requests and desires – it all comes down to good Project Management. Several elements are key to smooth processes and big companies have brought project coordination to perfection using only a few small principles.
Team Dynamics and Roles
Many freelancers work on their own, and some as part of a team. It can be quite a unique experience tackling a project as part of a team of 10 or 11 individuals. Understanding the roles of each individual in a team-based project experience can help freelancers be aware of the different roles that they may need to play as individuals. There are three main roles in my experience, with others optional.
The Communicator
The Communicator is client-facing which involves communication, needs analysis, follow-ups, and all other interactions. This role requires communication skills, a high-level perspective of how the project works, and important analytical skills to determine client needs and any potential challenges from that end. This individual represents the gateway to and from the client and therefore plays a crucial part in ensuring that information is received and understood by both parties.
Loves: Lunch meetings
Hates: Sitting at a desk for more than an hour
RISK: This individual may have charming communication skills and a smooth tongue, but if they don’t personally understand all of the complex details of the project, the client has no hope of understanding the whole. These communicators need to be armed with knowledge and completely comfortable with the concepts that they will be explaining.
The Designer/Planner
The second role is design (not graphic design, but project design), which covers not so much the visual aspect as tailoring the overall solution. Within our industry this would include site architecture, awareness of overall goals, user experience, and much of the planning stage of web design. This role requires experience in the industry more than anything else, and an eye for conceptual user experience. These individuals take the needs of the client, couple it with industry experience, and piece together the overall strategy for kicking