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Comment by jsdalton | Hacker News Reader

The comic referenced at the top of the article was good for a laugh or two: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell

I think it also illustrates where this article goes wrong. You don't say NO to the client, you say NO to a potential customer before they become the client.

Citing the second part of the comic - Client: "Our last designer was an IDIOT". Then the next appropriate question is - What idiot hired/managed him?

You're about to become the 'last designer'

> You don't say NO to the client, you say NO to a potential customer before they become the client.

This is critical, and it's fairly easy to recognize potential 'problem clients' when there's still time to escape.

Or just make sure you have an escape clause in your contract. Maybe the last designer actually was an idiot. I've found that if you behave like the doctor (in the article) it's often quite easy to steer the course of projects with even very difficult clients.

The part in the comic about the client photoshopping the design a bit seems fine to me, as long as they are just moving components around the screen (switching column locations, etc). I wouldn't blanketly suggest it is bad for the client to do this, since it may be easier to communicate what they want in photoshop than in text.

the comic doesn't suggest that its blanketly bad either.

It was an entertaining comic, but I agreed much more with Uncle Bob, the author of the linked article.

The comic said: "The client has completely forgotten that they hired you, the web designer, to build them a great product."

Whereas I see: "You have forgotten that the client is paying you to build a site which best represents the business in which they are the domain expert."

Just because you're good at X doesn't mean you're good at every (X, a) composition. For example, being a good golfer doesn't imply you'll be able to teach it; being a good singer doesn't imply you'll be able to write music; and being a good domain expert doesn't imply you'll be able to recognize a design that most effectively causes customers to purchase the products/services in your domain.

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