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You’ve met with your client and discovered all the answers to your questions. You’re now tasked at designing a space that meets your clients goals. Solves a particular problem.
If you don’t have a clear vision on your clients goals go back and ask more questions.
You need to create a space that would serve your client. Now start putting together the design for the eventual client presentation. You’re going to have to illustrate how you arrived at the solution you did.
Now you might’ve been taking your client on the journey all along. Bouncing sketches back and forth. Or it may be they haven’t seen much drawing from you yet. One thing I have to mention. If at all possible, meet in person to go over your design. Don’t send it via email and say what do you think.
You need to walk them through the story. There is a story. And you should be able to illustrate that story. The key to being able to tell that story is to document your process along the way. Document as you create. This allows you to go back through the story and show how you arrived at the solution you did.
There were hours and hours put into the design. You should have some materials to support it. Take all this. Anything that lead to the final design and put it into a presentation or case study. Something you can then take your client though. It should explain the problem. Show the challenges overcome to resolve that problem and the final result.
If you show up with concepts to your meeting. You haven’t finished your work as the designer. Be honest one concept is better than the other. You like one more. It solves the clients problem. That is the solution.
Presenting concepts to make the client feel involved is not the right solution. You get them involved by getting feedback along the way. There should be touch points in your process. Places were you check-in and have your assumptions clarified. You shouldn’t be going into the final presentation with assumptions. Those need to be resolved long before that meeting.
If you’ve done this. You cleared all the assumptions. You have eliminated all the possible concepts and narrowed it down to one. Walk into your presentation with the best and only solution to the problem.
Illustrate your idea. Telling the story of how it addresses the problem and meets the clients goals.
