Lauren Colton: Thank you guys so much for coming back. I know we're busy being sad about Germany.

[laughter]

Lauren: Gravity Works does websites, mobile apps. We work with a wide variety of vendors.

The way I got my job was, I had a phone call one day that said, "Hey, I started a company, where do you see yourself fitting in?"

I was employee number one. We've grown to 14 people. We have had a lot of interesting clients in the meantime. Some that I would qualify as divas, and all of them which had interesting projects.

If you want to get to do the fun stuff, you have to deal with the egos in the room. I love this quote. "Good judgment comes from experience, experience comes from bad judgment"

[laughter]

Lauren: It's really been turning reactions, into a bad client, into part of a process to expanding, and to being better at it next time around, because chances are, if you have someone who's a diva in a certain way, you're going to find someone else who's a diva in a very similar way down the road. Also, good design practices are good design practices all around.

Our current toolkit right now, it has client briefs, design rationales, team retrospectives, the whole team in on big decisions, and being ready to change in every single project we do. Again, this is an always changing process.

Currently our client briefs, it's requirements gathering, but it's not just what do you want to get out of it, it's setting the tone. It's making the conversation into a dialog. Not just you saying, "No, I'm the subject matter expect." Them saying, "No, we know some design."

Finally, it's a chance to start emerging yourself. To say, "Oh, OK, walk me through this. Take me through what it is that you guys do. What it is that you're going up against," because they're all going to have very unique constraints. I hope you guys can see this OK, but here's just a screenshot of one of our recent client briefs to go out.

We're making in their meeting discuss, these are our target audiences. For each target group that you're going after in this project, what is the desired message that you're sending out to these people and what is the action that you want them to take when they hear that message?

There are a lot of things, you would do to focus on these different groups. A few other questions that we would ask are things like, what makes your organization different from competitors? What do you do better?

It's a pretty standard question, but what we're really trying to find out is, why should people buy this? Why should they have what you're selling? Why are you awesome?

Another thing that's really important is, if visitors get one sentence out of a website, what should that be? If you were going to say, "We are awesome. You should buy our stuff." That's your sentence. You should buy our widgets.

The real thing here you're trying to get is why should we keep listening? Why do we want to read past that first sentence, that mission, that value statement?

Then, finally, how much time does your organization plan to spend each week on updating your copy and messaging? I'm a words person. You can do a lot with words, but if you don't give a damn, then you're not going to be able to do anything with your website.

Why bother? Do you have the resources? Have you considered what you're going to do with your message once we have this app out there? How are you going to keep your data fresh?

The best questions that you're going to get are pretty much divided into two groups, from what I've found so far. The first you're going to get "Hey man, you did it right. That's exactly it."

The other questions are going to get some of the same "No, actually, it's like this." But the big thing is start with why. You want to dig into why they're doing what they're doing, why they want to go where they want to go next.

Another very important thing that we've been doing is called, "The design rationale." This is basically, we hand off the mock ups. There's a desktop and mobile versions that we're giving them, if it's a responsive website.

We're saying, "Here's this part of the design and look, that's what it does." What we're doing at this point is we're focusing on the goals. You told us in the creative brief we want X.

We'll here's how we're doing in the design. We can talk about make it pop, but what exactly do you want to get out of that popping. You're going to get a lot of people who see the mock ups for the first time, and they're going to say, "Oh, well, I wanted a website. So, where's my rotator on the home page?"

That doesn't match your goals.

You wanted people to donate now. So, we're starting with "donate now." This is how you explain it. The second thing is you have to keep in mind that it's always about advancing the conversation, when someone brings up, "Hey, I really wanted that to be blue."

You can always get this feedback down into rose, thorn, bud. Is it a positive rose, is it a negative thorn, or does it have potential? Finally, when they have tasks of we want to change this, we want to update this, we want to focus on that, you have to prioritize.

There can only be one P1 thing. There can only be one highest priority item. Everything else has to willing to be below that point. Another thing that we do, developers do a lot, we work really collaboratively. Our design and development team which is [indecipherable 0:05:35] use it so heavily, but team retrospectives, a huge way to find out where your teammates are going, and how you can help them out.

When you're talking with your teammates, you want to describe the kind of results that you respect, what it is that you want them to do with their time. They know what they're doing, and they know how to reach that point.

In fact, when you help them, they're probably going to go further than you could have told them to go. But we have to remember that we can't all play woodwinds.

When you're conducting in an orchestra, you would not tell people, "OK. We're going to be a better orchestra by having everybody sound more like the woodwinds." That would be a really crappy orchestra.

[audience laughter]

Lauren: Don't go to see that, maybe performance are perhaps but we can [indecipherable 0:06:24] woodwinds.

[audience laughter]

Lauren: Another issue is being a diva ourselves, "Is the biggest ego in the room you?" The entire point that someone hired you is so that you could help them. It's all about meeting their goals.

Whether you're in an agency, if you're working in a [indecipherable 0:06:41] product, this is a personal thing. This is something that we have to work on individually. I can't tell you how to get to that point, but don't be the ego.

You do need to be self-aware, though. We have to be able to say, "This is what I want to get out of this project. Did I want money? Is that all I wanted out of this project?" [indecipherable 0:07:00] say, "Oh, well, I have a lot of cycle projects, I want more dribble projects, so I'll take a lower budget so that I could get that in my portfolio."

What is it that you, actually, want out of this? If you're annoyed with your clients, you should be charging more.

[audience laughter]

[audience applause]

Lauren: We have non-profit rates. If there's an organization that we really want to help for doing great work, they're fun to work with, they're letting us do awesome things, and they get lower rates sometimes when we can do that.

It's also OK to have an asshole rate if...

[audience laughter]

Lauren: It's really cool! If they say, "Oh, no, I'm going to deliver what we already agreed, I need to deliver it to you two days late, but this deadline has to stick." Well, OK. The next time where we're negotiating the contract, guess what happens to your rate.

The whole team has to be in on that. We have a huge range of team. We have, in here front end developers, UI designers, out tester guy, that's our director of development. If you're in on the project, if you're going to be a part of the project in the future, you should have some say in what's going on.

The first point is what success is and what you need to do to be successful. That's a constant discussion. We're always discussing, always arguing. What we really need to get out of this project is more downloads in the app store.

Finally, going back to knowing their precaution is, to let developers do what they do best. Let the testers do what they do best. Support them, but they know what they're doing.

There are certain points in the projects that we always have a go/no go discussion. We get, "Oh, I have an idea for a project." We have had, in the past, developers or senior developers say, "No. That's not going to work. It would be a really fun project to work on and their budget's fine, but that's not actually possible to do with our resources."

When we're starting a project, when we are doing any sort of new projects, there's always set points where we would say, "OK, everybody, are we good to go?"

Of course, everyone has the chance to use a safety word. You always want a safety word. Clients, sometimes, ask you to do things that you're not comfortable with, such as copy a design from another design firm. That's not cool. That's the point we need to drop that client.

Anyone on the team, absolutely anyone, if they were hired yesterday, if they say, "No, I'm not comfortable doing that," they need to be able to feel safe to say, "This isn't right."

Then, of course, you always need to be ready to change. What would the fun of this be, why would we be here if we didn't want to get better? 8 of the 10 things you have decided by yourself will prove over time to be false. 2 out of 10 maybe will get right. [indecipherable 0:10:09] laughing about it, but 8 out of the 10 things that you've decided will be wrong.

Lauren: Better. 8 of the 10 things you will have decided about yourself will prove over time to be false. 2 out of 10 maybe you'll get right. Then we'll pee ourselves laughing about it. But 8 out of the 10 things that you have decided will be wrong.

How do you figure out what you can do better next time? Feedback analysis is a great way to do that. We're making a big decision. We're deciding to pursue a new project or we want to use a new technology or use an old technology in a different way. Write down what you think that decision will turn out like.

It can be something that, "Oh, well I think we'll get this project," or, "No, I don't think this is going to work, but my project manager really wants it this way." Then set like a Google calendar alert, or if you're one of those iCal weirdos, and just set up an alert for eight months in the future, nine months in the future. Have it come back to you and say, "Hey, how did that turn out?"

Make yourself compare results with expectations, because maybe the issue is that your expectations aren't right. Maybe you're not analyzing with enough information. You have the permission to keep growing. Just keep asking why. If you really thought that you needed permission, I just gave it to you. Go ask more questions. It's a lot of fun.

The five things that I would absolutely recommend considering for your kit, it's entirely dependent on your contacts, but what really works for us is having a client brief, design rationale, team retrospectives, the whole team in on decisions, and being ready for change.

If you have any questions, of course I really, really want feedback. This stuff's really important to me. But you can also reach out to me on Twitter if you're not comfortable with speaking in front of everyone. It's overwhelming.

[laughter]

Lauren: But I wanted to leave you with this story. A man is walking down the street and notices that a blind man is sitting there on the sidewalk with a sign that says, "I am blind." He notices that in this blind man's hat there are only a couple quarters. He's wondering, "How could we make this better? Because I don't have swipe, so I can't give him money from my credit card. I don't have spare change."

He goes over to the guy and says, "Could I just try making one change to your sign?" The blind man says, "Sure." This man walking down the street adds, "It is spring." Now it reads, "It is spring and I am blind," and the man gets donations non-stop. The difference is that this man walking up had the empathy to understand this blind person was not able to fully see the beauty of spring going on around him.

This man also had the courage to say, "Hey, wait. We could do this better, and I have the expertise to try helping." When you guys go into your next meeting be ready to be empathetic and to start that dialogue. Try "Why?" If nothing else, just to start with "Why?" What did you guys hope to get out of this?

[laughter]

[applause]

Man 1: Fabulous. Thank you so much. I think one of the things that's really interesting about this tool kit that you guys have assembled here with the design rationale and the creative briefs and such is that you're being very introspective about what is working about your own process. Was that hard to get started? Did you have to fight just plowing through your day, getting the work done, meeting the client's needs? Or this idea of stepping back and reflecting on your own work, did that come easy?

Lauren: The reflection's built in to our culture, because we do have weekly stand-ups, we do have regular retrospectives with our projects. But you do have to say, "I'm going to take the time for this. I'm not going to respond to that email yet until I've dealt with this introspection." You do definitely have to make that a priority.

Facilitator: OK. What questions do people have for Lauren and what they're doing at Gravity Works? Are people doing this in their own place? Does someone have a similar story to share?

Lauren: We have a question.

Facilitator: Yes? Yes, come on. There we go. Way back there. Here we go. Hey, Ross.

Man 2: I had a question about your safe word. Is that something that you use in client meetings to let the rest of your team know that you're uncomfortable with something?

[laughter]

Man 2: Or is that elsewhere?

Lauren: The safe word is "Broccoli."

Man 2: It's what?

Lauren: No, we don't actually have a safe word. It's just that everyone has that moment of, "OK, you're involved in this interaction. You're a professional, and you have your own set of ethics, so you can say, 'No, this is wrong.'" Shockingly, clients sometimes do ask you to do things where it's like, "Nope. We're done."

Facilitator: Is there a protocol that you have for dealing with a client that's going down a road that may not have crossed the line quite yet but could be getting so close that you want to say, "Look, we need to have a higher level conversation here?"

Lauren: Yeah. We do have sometimes meetings with, if we're having an issue with one person on the stakeholders side, we can ask to have their superior in on the meeting. Another thing that we have done in the past is rotating project managers. If you notice that two people just aren't meshing, there can be someone else on the team with an entirely different set of skills, an entirely different way of looking at things. They will reshape the project, in a way that works. I'd rather keep clients, because the long-term relationships do end up with more interesting projects.

Facilitator: Have you had clients that you've been able to turn around, the behaviors that were putting them in the annoying category, they've actually subsided from, and you guys are all working really well together? What was that transition like?

Lauren: That was mostly changing project managers for the ones that turn around. Another thing is to go back to focusing on the goals, because sometimes people will get really upset. They really anticipated that when they said, "Make me a website," that it was going to have a rotator on the home page, and that it was going to be red. You delivered something with a button and it was blue, and they're furious.

If you can get that conversation back to their goals and work in with...It does take a lot of give and take. But if you can say, "Oh, OK, Well, let's re-frame these goals. Your goal is to have a red website." Then that's what they're paying you for.

Facilitator: Earlier today I talked about this idea of beans and noses and clients that you have to just let them do what they're going to do. Do you have a similar viewpoint in your work? How do you guys handle that?

Lauren: Man, we could have like three bean salad.

Facilitator: [laughs] Three bean salad?

Lauren: Yeah. Oh, you're not from the Midwest.

Facilitator: No, I'm not.

[laughter]

Facilitator: I'm an easterner. I was only recently introduced to hotdish. We don't have that. We have chowder.

[Off-mic conversation]

Lauren: Yeah.

Facilitator: Yeah. It's like a hotdish. Here, Tracy has a question.

Tracy: I had a question about if you've ever had a situation, where maybe the client that you're working with is really on the right path, but they have upper level politics in their company that's taking them down a different path that you sense is not taking the project in the right direction. How do you handle those situations, where there's some office politics going on, outside of your immediate clients?

Lauren: Unfortunately, I am not talented enough to change the politics or bureaucracies in my clients. To work with them better, I find that regular meetings with more than one person involved helps. If you have two factions, make sure you have people from each faction in those meetings, but have it.

"We're going to have a weekly check-in. It's going to be a half an hour, Google hang out. We're all going to just sit and talk about where we want to go next." It's something that, if you can get them talking, generally, that's enough to get them to realize we're going for the same thing.

Facilitator: Thank you very much, Lauren.

[applause]