Every few months, a slew of articles and blog posts come out addressing the universal issue of getting stakeholder buy-in or obtaining the ever elusive sign-off on your design. They provide great advice regarding building relationships, utilizing preventative measures, and remembering to be patient.

We are all consultants

What the articles often assume, but fail to mention concretely, is that design as a profession is a consulting business. Although we are responsible for actually executing on a vision, we still seek final approval elsewhere. Regardless of your role, be it “inny”, “outie”, or freelance, each one of us is a consultant to a client. That client may be an individual, department, or an entire organization. According to Peter Block, author of Flawless Consulting, “A consultant is a person in a position to have some influence over an individual, a group, or an organization, but who has no direct power to make changes or implement programs,” (emphasis original).

This fundamental understanding is important because our business, and ultimately the most difficult part of our job, is the business of influencing others. As designers we often feel frustrated because want the direct control, and may even act like we have it. Yet for a design project to be successful, a designer needs to function and behave differently than a decision maker. A good first step is to enter the project with the mindset and understanding that since you are not the decision maker, you can’t force anyone to do what you suggest. As a consultant, however, you can advice, recommend, and influence to the best of your abilities.

Many people look for procedural ways to more effective at consulting and influencing others, but such guidance rarely exists because a large aspect of consulting is “that your own self is involved in the process to a much greater extent than if you were applying your expertise in some other way. Your own reactions to a client, your own feelings during discussions, your own ability to solicit feedback from the client – all are important dimensions to consultation.”.

Thus, as consultants we are often operating on two planes. We are on the one hand operating at the substance level where we are attempting to rationally understand the client’s problem and recommending solutions. At the same time, we are also operating on an affective level, where we generate and sense our own feelings, as well as those of the client. It is crucial that as consultant, we pay attention to the second level.

Resistance is Futile Natural

As consultants, it is natural for us to think that if we present our designs clearly and logically, provide data to support our decisions, and truly have the client’s best interests at heart, that we will get the buy-in and support that we are seeking. We often believe this because we are not paying enough attention to the affective level until we begin to run into resistance.

Resistance is the point when we begin to lose forward momentum on the project, and start to believe that the client is being short-sited, stubborn, or irrational. In fact, resistance is an emotional process occurring within the client, and has absolutely nothing to do with all the rational data and justification that you have just presented. Although it may seem that the resistance is aimed directly at you, its important to not take it personally. If you are facing resistance, it is a sign that you have touched upon something important or valuable, and caused an emotional process to occur within the client. The client is resisting as a way to defend against having to make a difficult or unpopular decision, confront an organizational problem, or deal with a personal reality that they have been trying to emotionally avoid.

According to Block, “resistance is predictable, natural, and necessary part of the learning process. When as consultants we wish resistance would never appear or would just go away, we are, by that attitude, posing an obstacle to the client’s really integrating and learning from our expertise.”

Managing Resistance

The key to managing resistance is to understand that resistance is emotional discomfort expressed indirectly, and once we help our clients express these feelings directly, they will be able to more readily accept and use our advice.

There are three steps to helping our clients express themselves directly:

1. Identify that resistance is taking place
2. Name the resistance in a neutral way
3. Leave room for a response

The best way to identify that resistance is taking place is to use your own feelings as a gauge. Are you having an important conversation with a client, but are feeling irritated or bored? If so, take a step back and in your own mind attempt to identify what form the resistance is taking place.

Resistance has many faces depending on the individual as exemplified below:

• Questioning Methodology – You are preparing to conduct a research or usability study and your client is questioning your methodology. Although some questioning is legitimate to understand your approach, if the questioning continues for more than 10 minutes, you may be facing resistance.
• Lack of Surprise – Perhaps you have conducted your research and are presenting findings back to the client. They respond by saying, “I am not surprised”, as if being surprised is the worst thing that could happen to them. The client’s fear of surprise is actually their desire to always be in control, and thus guard themselves against having to face up to a difficult emotional reality.
• Give Me More Detail – You are presenting sketches of your designs to discuss potential approaches, and the client keeps pressing you for more and finer bits of information. Regardless of how much information you give the client, it is never enough, and they don’t want to proceed until they get their latest request for more detail. When you start to get impatient with the questions, even though you are able to answer them, that is the moment to suspect resistance.
• Impracticality – As you design, you continually communicate and present designs in various stages of fidelity to your client. At every instance, the client reminds you that they “live in the real world and are facing real world problems” accusing you of being impractical. Although there may be some truth in this statement, the emphasis on practicality may lead you to suspect that you are up against an emotional issue.
• Compliance – One of the most difficult forms of resistance to identify is compliance. The client is agreeing to all your suggestions, everything is going swimmingly; they are the best clients ever! However, it’s not natural for a client to have no feedback or reservations. If those reservations are not expressed to you directly, they will come out in another, perhaps more destructive way. It is important to recognize this form of resistance and help the client express their reservations directly.

Once you have identified the resistance in your own mind, the next step is to name it to the client in a neutral way. The way you name the resistance is important, as you want to be sensitive to the client’s emotional process and not put them on the defensive. For example, if a client is being compliant you might say, “You seem to go along with all of my recommendations. I am having a hard time understanding your real feelings about this design”.

Once you name the resistance, you have to leave room for the response by quite literally not saying anything until your client responds. There might be an awkward silence where you will feel tempted to jump in and start rambling, but the goal of naming the resistance is to allow the client to express their feelings directly so that the project may be able to move forward.

Most of the time, naming the resistance will open up a channel for direct communication. Yet on occasion, naming the resistance won’t help, in those cases its best to start with your own feelings. You could say, “I feel very frustrated by this discussion”. The client may ask you why you feel this way, and it will open the door to get you to a direction discussion of the problem.

Sometimes It’s Not Resistance

Finally, it is important to remember that when a client disagrees with you or pushes back, it is not always resistance. Sometimes they just disagree with you, or don’t truly buy-in to your point of view. We can all become paranoid and believe that every objection is resistance. It is important to remember that resistance is discomfort expressed indirectly, so if a client says “This approach would put me in a vulnerable position politically, and I do not want to proceed in this manner”, they are being quite direct and honest about their feelings, and are not resisting you in any way. Although it might be disappointing, you should feel appreciative of the client’s direct expression and also know where you stand with the client.

Summary

As consultants, some of the hardest and most rewarding work that we can do is advise, recommend, and educate. Once we accept that resistance is a natural part of the process – and not take it personally – we will be much more effective in getting buy-in, as well as truly help the client to learn from our expertise. Much of resistance management hinges on being attune to the affective level of the conversation and relationship. It also about openness and awareness of our feelings, while helping the client express theirs directly. To finish with another quote from Block:

authentic behavior with a client means you put into words what you are experiencing with the client as you work. This is the most powerful thing you can do to have the leverage you are looking for to build client commitment.

Although social networking sites have become the commonplace over the past eight years since the introduction of Friendster in 2002, designers have not yet explored two important notions: 1) What kind of social experience do social networking sites foster?; and 2) Do social networking sites encourage community?

Introduction

This past year social media, and social network sites in particular, have reached new heights of popularity and adoption. It is no longer unusual for clients to request that designers “add Facebook” to their respective sites, mainly for the purpose of increased engagement and community building for their brand as a part of a greater social marketing strategy. Although social networking sites have become commonplace, designers have not yet explored two important notions:

1. What kind of social experience do social networking sites foster?; and
2. Do social networking sites encourage community?

The Anatomy of a Social Network Site

The Facebook wall

Although many of us utilize social networking sites on a daily basis, it is important to step back and understand the various components that make up a social networking sites, as well recognize that social networking sites are fundamentally different from other social software. Social network sites differentiate themselves from blogs, wikis, and social tagging sites, by three distinct features: profiles, friend lists, and comments[1]. According to Rosen[2], unlike the “proto-social networking sites of a decade ago [that] used metaphors of place to organize their members: people were linked through virtual cities, communities, and homepages,” today’s social networking sites “organize around metaphors of the person, with individual profiles that list hobbies and interests.”

The fundamental feature of a social network site is the profile. A profile is constructed through a pre-defined web form that each member completes for the purpose of describing themselves to other members of the site. The most basic profile fields include demographic details such as age, sex, and location, followed by relationship status, educational level, political and religious affiliations, as well as tastes in music, movies, and books, a photograph, and open-ended descriptions. These fields exist because Friendster – originally designed as a dating site – was the first popular social network site and was subsequently emulated by newer social networking sites.

Once the profile is created, members are than encouraged to look at others’ profiles and add those people to their Friends list. The creation of a friends lists is what makes up the “social network” component of the sites.

Social networking sites also provide a means for communication among Friends. This is most commonly done through comments posted on “The Wall” in Facebook or the “Friend’s Comments” section in MySpace. The comments are publicly displayed and viewable to anyone with access to the individuals’ profiles. According to a survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, “the most popular way of communicating via social networking sites is to post a message to a friend’s profile, page, or ‘wall’.” [3]

The Social Experience of Social networking sites

According to Jenny Preece[4], “an online community is first and foremost a social experience that changes according to who is present, the number of people involved, and the type of discussion that occurs.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, social networking sites tend to foster an narcissistic experience, where users goals become to collect friends, feedback, and attention. There is very little sense of being part of a larger group, and little motivation for establishing connections with strangers. By following the daily activities of “Friends”, people do begin to feel, what Leisa Reichelt [5] coined as “ambient intimacy”, which is a sense of a stronger connection to weak ties, such as long lost school friends, dispersed colleagues, or relatives. However, the binary friend/not friend designation found on social networking sites often collapses all relational contexts, turning the semi-public space into a broadcast medium, where others can voyeuristically observe interpersonal interactions.

Some of these experiences are dependent on the design of the friendship mechanism in social networking sites. Sites like Facebook which require reciprocal approval from both parties to become connected, encourage users to limit connections to people who they already know, and don’t particularly dislike. In essence, Facebook truly is just for friends. Sites like Twitter, where a reciprocal connection is not required, people are much more likely to follow strangers that may be of interest. However, there is a proliferation of spammers and bots which often clutter the stream and diminish the experience.

For all social networking sites, the temporal aspect combined with an ever growing connection list creates a significant strain on attention. People often find it difficult to follow individuals of interest because they get lost in the stream, especially if there is a particularly active individual. The situation gets even more complicated as people join more than one social networking sites. In this instance, individuals often pick a primary social networking sites, which they will check and interact with frequently, while others will be visited occasionally.

Social Networking Sites and Community

Multi User Dungeon

Over the years, as technology has progressed, so have community designs. Moving from text-based MUDs (multi-user dungeons) and MOOs (multiuser object oriented technology), to threaded discussions such as usenet groups, listserves. and bulletin boards, and most recently social network sites. According to Preece, online communities are made up of three parts: a purpose which is supported by technology and guided by policies. The purpose of social networking sites is generally thought of as creating connections, or building up the social network through friends list. This purpose is fairly generic compared to community sites of a decade ago, which ranged from interest groups to education, business, and health support.

The community sites of a decade ago were explicitly situated within the context of the domain under discussion, while individuals and their relationships with each other were invisible. In social networking sites, the individual and their relationships are explicit, while the community becomes invisible or imagined. The interaction is centered on individual actions and reactions, with little sense of a larger group. Currently, social networking sites are designed to increase the strength of ties between individuals, instead of fostering a sense of community.

Looking Forward

Google Reader's Like functionality

As we look into the future, we should not forget the lessons we learned in the past. Community designs such as threaded discussions, provide for rich content, a sense of being part of a group, feelings of support and belonging, as well a common interest upon which new relationships can form. Perhaps social networking sites, although incredibly popular, are not always the answer to increased engagement and community in every context. Designers should think about ways of combining the rich context of threaded discussions along with aspects of social networking sites. Is there a way that we could surface content, but at the same time provide pointers to individual contributors? Google Reader is currently taking first steps to this approach with their “Like” functionality, which allows all Google Readers users to mark a post they like, and also view others who liked the same post.

I challenge designers to stop emulating designs that have not changed since 2002, and take the concept further through the creation of context appropriate designs which balance the larger community and the individual. The next time you are designing social network features, think carefully about what kind of behavior and social experience you wish to encourage. Do you want people to connect with their existing contacts, such as found on TripIt? Or do you want them to discover resources from strangers, such as found on Delicious? Additionally, think carefully about the value proposition of your social networking sites. Why will people choose to use the features on your site versus the several other sites they are currently using? What personal benefit does your site provide aside from social networking sites?

References

[1] Boyd, d. and  Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 11.

[2] Rosen, C. (2007). Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism. The New Atlantis, 15.

[3] Lenhart, A., and Madden, M. (2007). Social Networking Websites and Teens: An Overview. Pew Interent & American Life Project, January 7.

[4] Preece, J. (2004). Designing and evaluating online communities: research speaks to emerging practice. Int. J. Web Based Communities, 1(1).

[5] Reichelt, L. (2007). Ambient Intimacy. Available at: http://www.disambiguity.com/ambient-intimacy/