Design projects at our studio usually begin with a kick-of meeting of sorts, where the designer(s), developer(s), an account manager (usually myself) and the client all get together and talk. We discuss everything from the mundane scheduling details to conceptual frameworks and themes for the project.These meetings have a lot of purposes and, as much as I feel meetings can be a giant time suck, these ones usually tend to be pretty valuable. I use the word valuable instead of productive here because I don’t think there’s a lot of work accomplished during the meeting. What does happen in these meetings is a mixture of many intangible benefits.

To start off with, at a very basic level the kick-off ensures that we all understand the nature of the project in the same way. The problem with having dedicated project managers (PM) or account managers (AM) involved in design projects is that while the intermediary service they provide can reduce distraction for the rest of the team, the additional layer of communication they add often translates to miscommunications. It’s the child-hood game of Telephone all over agin. Many times, this miscommunication is at the onset of the project as goals, objectives, features and functionality are all being established in the name of defining a scope of work and budget. It’s impossible to involve the entire team in this process, especially if you plan on making any money on the project and a good PM will leave enough room in the project definition that things can shift a bit without jeopardizing its success. So, getting everyone together in the same room to talk about what’s been decided on is a little back-ass-wards, granted, but a reality of the process.

Secondly, these meetings establish a lot of the social dynamics of the project. Designer’s can see and hear the client and pick-up on nuances of the client. This helps everyone come to a better understanding of how we describe problems, relate issues or give praise. Also, if two team members are just not going to be compatible you can usually tell right-off-the-bat. If it’s tough to tell, they can probably work it out, but the few times I’ve been involved in project where two team members just didn’t see eye-to-eye it was pretty obvious from that first interaction. It then becomes the responsibility of the studio to reconfigure as need.

Finally, the kick-off meeting is a unique and valuable time to build enthusiasm for the project. Usually, these meetings are taking place right after contracts have been negotiated and signed. Money’s been discussed and often concessions have been made by both sides and so people are coming into the meeting with some minor battle scars. This hour or two meeting provides team members a great chance to heal the wounds and get everyone amped about the work ahead.This is, of course, easier said than done. It is, after all, work and no matter what designers entrpreneurs will tell you, they would rather be laying on the beach in Hawaii. But, by talking about potential and opportunity in the meeting, everyone has the chance to feel like they have contributed (important) and that there’s something to look forward to (again, important).In addition to these higher-level objectives for a successful kick-off, there are few best practices I’ve found:

1. Get everyone prepped. The odds of something going wrong during the meeting are greatly reduced if everyone knows how the project has been defined before hand.
2. Take lots and lots of notes. Write down everything–what was said, who said it, how it was responded too. So much of what will happen down the road will be dependent on this meeting and making sure it’s all documented will save you hours of pain.
3. Get those notes transcribed ASAP when the meeting is over. Wait an hour and you’ll forget 5% of what was said. Wait a day and you’ll forget 80%. Wait two days and you won’t bother transcribing at all. It may seem a little over-kill to walk out of a meeting and immediately start to transcribe those notes, but you’ll be hating it if you don’t.
4. Let designers be Designers. Designers are great at creating appropriate and focused experiences, but their real value in many situations is understanding a problem and finding a way to communicate it. Often times, people in the meetings walk in with pre-conceived notions of what this “thing” is going to be. As long as the designers are informed, they can provide recommendations to enhance the experience at a very high-level that will pay-off ten-fold.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 10th, 2008 at 1:15 am and is filed under Design, Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.