Designer-client communication in web design
Andrew Dekker, Peter Worthy, Stephen Viller, Kirsten Zimbardi, Ricky Robinson · 2014
This paper reflects on a participant observational study that was conducted during a long-term iterative design project in which there was a high level of digital communication between the designers and clients. We describe a number of communication technologies that were employed to support the designer-client communication, and examine how successful they were in supporting this work. In our reflection we find that although the nature of digital communication between participants appears straightforward, there are a number of complexities in the roles and messiness that occurs throughout the design process. We examine how these channels were used in tandem to effectively communicate between the stakeholders, and explore why some technologies (primarily email) were more successful than others. Finally, we describe a number of patterns that emerged within the overall narrative, and reflect on ways in which these tools could be considered and designed in the future to better support this kind of project work.