Educating our Clients

Posted on May 2, 2013 by liam

Web design is not a professinal career and there is no such thing as a design professional – or so our clients would lead us to believe.

All to often in our role as a web designers we’re asked by our clients, to make the logo bigger, change the colours. As a professional (yes, we are professionals believe it or not), our opinion all to often seems overlooked.

We’re hired under the presumption, we know what we’re doing and that contrary to belief, there is a method in amongst the madness.

As an individual I can’t ever recall telling my doctor, dentist, or even plumber how to go about their jobs and im more than certain most people I know have refrained from doing so too… why? I believe this is because most people understand that these “professionals” have a greater knowledge of their trades than they do. When it comes to web design however – our clients are under the understanding that because they surf the internet, they themselves understand the principles involved in creating a webiste.

Due to ths missconception, our clients more than often take us creative professionals as the labourer, carrying out the manual work.

The lesson I’m trying to portray here is that “We know better than they do”

As harsh as the above sounds, we know better than our clients. We work within the industry day in day out, we see what converts and what doesn’t, we understand what colours spark emotions and what images trigger our thoughts.

It’s important that as professionals we educate our clients, we need to establish that we’re experts and that our opinions are grounded in research and professional experience.

From personal experience…

Rather that presenting a flat concept, walk your clients through each decision, just why did you put that button there? More than often, upon hearing the rational behind a design decision is enough to remind them that you’re the expert.
Show research that helps to backup your design decisions.
If possible, source examples of other successful sites using a certain technique you’ve employed

For any service oriented business, more than often one of the main challenges is to understand how to manage clients successfully. Possibly one of the wisest ways to achieve good working relationship with our clients is to educate them.

Re-imagining the mobile phone

Posted on April 24, 2013 by liam

The future of Mobile Phones – sort of…

Each day I spend approximately 2 hours in my car, traveling to and from work. During this time I find my mind wandering – this can be anything, its sporadic, I can be wandering about certain projects I have on at work or it could be something completely random such as “Do guys enjoy the taste of grass?!”.

Today however, I spent my journey thinking of objects in my car and those that I’d seen along the way, and re-imagining them, Trying to see another purpose for each.

The object that stuck with me, and stood out the most was the mobile phone. I remember getting my first mobile phone – I had just turned 13, and for my birthday I had asked my Dad to take all of my money and go to the shop to buy me one. When I had gotten home he said he couldn’t find one for the money I had and so I’d have to continue to save. I was gutted, I ran up the stairs to get changed so that I could head out with my friends and feel sorry for myself. As I was getting changed however I heard a phone ring coming from under my pillow, My Dad didn’t let me down and ever since that day I’ve always owned a mobile phone.

Back then the mobile phone was exactly that, a phone, that was mobile. Today however, the mobile phone is so much more, It’s become part of us, its an extension of man if you like.

Our phones don’t just allow us to “make phone call’s” – no, they empower us. We now use our mobile phones to access the internet, we send sms text messages, our phones are calculators, calenders, cameras, video recorders and with the influx of apps our phones are entertainment devices.

In just 10 years the mobile phone has morphed into something I could never have imagined, and still – thats only 10 years. What will the mobile phone be like in another decade? Will we still refer to our phones as that? Or will they become known as something much more suited, such as mobile devices?

Don’t chase happiness, choose it.

Posted on February 25, 2013 by liam

About 12 months ago my Grandfather underwent a quadruple heart bypass. Before his operation we spoke about happiness, and what makes life worth living.

My Grandad said if he could have his time over, he wouldn’t haven spent so much time at work and that we are responsible for our own happiness. It’s nobody else’s job to make us happy or create the life we want for us. There’s nobody else we can blame, not our parents and not society. It’s our own responsibility to make sure that our life is worth living. It’s our responsibility to take care of our happiness.

Up until that moment, I had always focused on the gap between the life I was living and the life I wanted to live. I had been trying to close that gap as fast as possible. I believed that reaching my dreams was the only thing that could bring me happiness. I thought that after I had achieved what I wanted, I would finally be allowed to stop and breathe and enjoy the moment. In the past 5 years I believe I had done more than most can wish to do in a decade and still, I wasn’t content.

I was always chasing happiness.

Happiness is always there with us in the moment. We just have to make the shift and choose to see it. When you’re at the very beginning of the journey to creating a life you love, things can get overwhelming pretty quickly. Once you’ve taken responsibility for your life it’s easy to start blaming yourself. We beat ourselves up and try to force ourselves to work harder, because we feel like a failure the minute we stop and look around.

But what is the purpose of this kind of lifestyle? Why did we choose to live our dreams in the first place? Because we wanted to be happy. But being happy doesn’t come from the things we achieve or how far we’ve come. It comes from being present and enjoying the journey.

If you think about it, why should you be more able to experience happiness once you’ve reached your goals? If all you’ve ever done was push yourself harder to succeed, it will be almost impossible to be still and ambrace the moment. If you can’t appreciate the journey, then you won’t appreciate your successes either.

I’m now trying to see life as one big experiment on happiness. Sure, I’m still working really hard towards my dreams. But I’m not losing myself in the process anymore. I’ve learned to appreciate what I have now while I’m reaching for my dreams.

Sometimes a small mind shift, one little realisation can make all the difference.

Taking Risks and Failing

Posted on February 20, 2013 by liam

Lets just distance ourselves from the negatives surrounding the word Failure and re-appropriate the meaning behind the word.

Failure allows us to reflect upon what we did wrong and what we did right. It also allows us to reflect on what we will do differently next time – we learn an incredible amount.

Failure breeds resilience, a resilience to the ups and downs in different situations and teaches us to handle stress more effectively. It gives us an insight as too what failure looks and feels like and gives us an edge for the future.

Another thing failure can lead to is a hugely increased determination. Being a climber, with every fall I take, my determination levels double and the first thing I do, is take a step back, look at the wall, look at my route, and try again.

One thing in life is that if we only ever live within our comfort zones then we can’t really grow. Failing, takes us outside of our comfort zones, it gives us something new and gives us the opportunity to improve for next time.

When tackling a new situation the first thing I ask myself is “What’s the worst thing that can happen?”. Although this may seem daunting to most, ask yourself honestly – what is the worst thing that can happen?

When I was 21 years old I took a fall at a local skate park, I’d learnt something new and wanted to try it on all sorts of ramps. As I was psyching myself up – one of my best friends asked me “Whats the worst that can happen?” and told me to just go for it, that night I spent it in the countess of Chester Hospital with a broken nose, fractured cheekbone, broken front tooth, stitched up lip and concussion. As funny as that may read to some, I can now look back on the situation and know that I took that risk and that I have no regrets.

Although my above example is an obvious risk of danger, risky situations can be applied to mostly all of life’s situations, “Do I go for a career change at 35?”, “Should I leave my job to go traveling”, “Shall I sing on karaoke in front of 200 people and fear humiliation?”…

Life is all about risk taking, If you stay in your comfort zone for too long you’re in danger of becoming stagnant, ask yourself “what risks have you taken lately?” and get out there and try something new.

The first outdoor climb of the year

Posted on February 17, 2013 by liam

Today was my first proper outdoor climb since I started the sport. I wasn’t feeling too confident about the whole thing despite the fact I’ve felt good during my recent indoor climbs at the Climbing Hangar in Liverpool and The North West Face in Warrington – mainly because this was my 3rd consecutive day climbing and my grip felt weak, I was determined to give it my best effort however and make the most of the weather.

The route we chose was known as the Horoscope, its graded at a 6A but judging from the comments on the UK Climbing logbook it’s possibly graded to low for what it is. The initial start is very hard and I believe it would have been much easier to lead climb, on the other hand I feel I could have nailed the start had my arms felt stronger or I had taken a couple of days rest beforehand.

A lot of the holds were really quite damp. I wasn’t scared of falling off at all, but with damp hands and the corroding sandstone I was more anxious about my hands or feet slipping suddenly and loading my ankle. Despite my over critical self nature and getting pretty annoyed at my self for failing each time I attempted the route, I absolutely loved doing the whole routine of being able to try hard on a rock climb, being outside feeling the cold air and dealing with ropes and and real rock. It definitely gave me a taster of what I was in for ahead of the summer months.

Since I started climbing, I’ve still got this weird feeling of making rapid progress versus feeling very weak in my leg muscles and positions at the same time, my technique is sometime I’m also trying to work on each and every time I’m climbing.

Before we left, my Brother decided to conjure up a makeshift Abseil from a bridge we crossed.

Makeshift Abseil

Learning to write.

Posted on February 15, 2013 by liam

Like many others, I’ve toyed with the idea of keeping a blog. It seems that every couple of months I’ll get fired up, my creative juices will get flowing, I design, build and install wordpress, and then – I let it languish.

This time around I’m doing it differently, no fancy custom themes and no bells and whistles – I want to learn how to write.

My name is Liam Gallagher and I’m a 25 year old web designer from Runcorn, currently working for Venn Digital in Wilmslow, the North West of England. I’m a BMX’er, a boxer, and more recently, I’ve become a climber. My blog will be based loosely around each of the aforementioned. I don’t plan to spend too much time writing posts that are intellectually brilliant and poke my readers to re-evaluate their own thoughts, but to write for myself – keep track of where I’m at and what my thoughts were at the time.