An important part of communication is knowing your audience. If you don’t know how the information you’re sharing is going to be interpreted, you’re going to have a hard time communicating effectively.
One of the harder aspects of web development is knowing how technical to get when discussing a web project with a client. I’ve found that there are three levels of aptitude that civilians (non-web people) operate on.
Before I dive into this, I want to make something perfectly clear; this is not some angst-ridden excuse to blow off steam about how I think people who don’t build websites are idiots. Most people can learn how to do anything. It’s a matter of personal choice how people develop their professional skills, and thankfully most people don’t go into web development. They’re just not insanely excited by it like we are.
Level One: The Consummate Pro
Photo by rogerimp
I love people like this. They don’t know anything about HTML, CSS or CMS, and more importantly they don’t care. They don’t need any greater explanation or detail than “The site is up.”
It’s not that they don’t care about their site; they do. But they know that they wouldn’t bother a plumber during an installation or a mechanic during an oil change, so they don’t feel the need to get constant updates from the person building their website.
If you run into a technical problem with a Consummate Pro, use the broadest terms possible to explain it. Phrases like, “There’s a problem with the server” are okay. Phrases like, “The server cache has reached it’s maximum threshold of 20 kB due to a scripting error with one of our plugins” should never, ever be used.
Level Two: The Eager Beaver
Photo by sherseydc
I find web design and programming to be exciting and a valuable use of my time. But it’s what I do for a living, and if I didn’t love it quite so much I would probably be doing something else.
The Eager Beaver is someone who is currently experiencing a phase of intense passion about web programming, but they will grow out of it the first time they debug a site to work with IE6 (or something equally traumatic).
They need to hear just a taste of tech-talk to feel satisfied. They want to understand what’s going on, but they’re not going to hound you for answers. So if you run into a technical problem with an Eager Beaver, use broad terms mixed with a dash of tech. For instance, explain cross-browser compatibility issues like this: “Since not everyone has the same software on their computer, a lot of websites look different because the browsers interpret the XHTML and CSS differently.”
Level Three: The Weekend Warrior
Photo by the brownhorse
These are the most difficult clients to talk to because their technical knowledge is going to vary greatly from subject to subject. They may have an incredible grasp of Javascript, but they don’t really get logical DIVs or pseudo-classes.
They still make great clients because they have the capacity to learn how to do a lot of web stuff on their own, but understand that they are not web developers, and no matter how much you want to you can’t talk to them like they are.
You don’t want to simplify things too much for a Weekend Warrior. They tend to have a thirst for technical knowledge and don’t appreciate being talked down to, which is what makes them the toughest audience for tech talk. The best way to deal with them is to ask questions and try to gauge how much they know about the problem you’re having. For instance, if they ask you how you set the color for the text on their site, show them the CSS file and ask them where they think it lives. This gives them the opportunity to learn about classes, selectors and hex color codes. If it goes over their head, back up and explain how CSS interacts with the XHTML on the page.
Poetry and Pros
Like I said, I don’t think that these people are stupid because they don’t know how websites work in the same way I hope my plumber doesn’t think I’m stupid because I don’t know what my shower drain connects to.
Remember that our clients hired us not just because we know how to build websites, but so that they don’t have to. A keystone of professionalism is appreciating that not everyone knows what you know, and not because they’re dumber than you are. The basic principles of web design are alien to an accountant because they don’t need to know them. After all, how much do you know about the basic principles of architecture?
