Sometimes when Matt asks me for feedback on a design, I find myself saying horrible things like “Make it crunchy” or “More Brooklyn” or “How about a hand-drawn chanterelle?”

I know this is Wrong. What we really need to focus on are questions like: Is this design on-brand? Does it account for the actions users want to take? Does it meet our client’s business goals? Does it solve the problem?

Unfortunately, getting to business goals and problem solving isn’t always straightforward, and sometimes the real goals and problems are buried within words like ‘crunchy’. Part of a designer’s job is to ferret out the hidden meanings behind such annoying, painful feedback—to rend objectivity from subjectivity, if you will.

Ways To Rend It

In an attempt to make discussions about design feel concrete, we’ve built some subjectivity busters into our process. Here are tools we use.

Research & Discovery
Without good R & D, we’re entirely at the mercy of how well our clients articulate themselves. This is fine when a client is super-communicative and prepared, but this isn’t always the case. Thoroughly researching a business (its history, its services, where it’s headed, what it wants), puts us in a better position to know if there is or isn’t a real basis for the chanterelles talk.

Styleboards
Styleboards are collage mash-ups of images that represent a particular style. They’re a fantastic way to draw out subjective issues and separate discussions about the look and feel of a site from discussions about layout and UX issues. Here’s an example:

Matt wrote about this once before.

Site Inspiration
Once we’ve addressed style, color and tone, we try to take things a step further with site inspiration documents. Using our client’s feedback from the R&D/styleboards, we go out and find sites that roughly exemplify what we’ve talked about. These documents serve a dual purpose: they show our clients what their ‘tastes’ might look like when translated into a web page, and move us toward a discussion about how the look of the site will balance with the layout, content requirements, etc.

Interrogation
Interrogating people is the absolute best way to see what they’re driving toward. Don’t know what ‘make it pop’ means? You could just ask: What do you mean by make it pop? Can you show me some sites you think pop? What about them pops? What about your existing site doesn’t pop? How does popping connect with your brand & business goals?

Golden Buy-in

Most the time, this process ends up producing a first round of design that pleases (or at least doesn’t bewilder/infuriate). This has to do with two things. For one, you’ve simply done some good
up-front work. But the more important factor is that you’ve given your client buy-in throughout the process, including her in discussions and asking for her opinion at each step, before you produce a first round of anything. This buy-in is solid gold.