First Experience Building A Web-Page

‘You are suppose to be the expert desinger’ - client lead

I start this post with some incredibly hard hitting truths in the consulting industry. In that, not every project you are staffed on will be the project you want to be working on. In-fact through my many years working in consulting I’ve had a handful of projects which I thought.. hmm that’s random or what benefit will that provide me if I want to go down X path.

My honest truth - those projects you pick up, which don’t fully align to your niche/passion will be the projects that provide the most growth.

As consultants, our strength lies in being adaptable and flexible, with a strong work ethic and determination to complete projects. With changing demands in the consulting market it’s important to pivot when required - whilst still learning in unfamiliar environments. We develop a greater level of resilience and appreciation to different pieces of work. When compounded (doing this process many times) turns you into a stronger consultant.

Back to building a web portal - the client says you are the expert when coming to me for user interface suggestions / best practices.

Internally I thought this guy clearly has the wrong person.

Externally I showed the client that he was right - I was the expert.

How did I show him this?

I learnt through trial and error, the client didn’t see this, but in the background every day I was either researching ways to build an online portal on their tool of choice, leveraging individuals who can answer my questions or being proactive in listening in on meetings to then translate the needs of specific user groups into a newly designed web portal.

It took me a couple of iterations to finally get the design right. Below I will outline what were some core experiences and learnings from building the web portal.

Number 1:

Process with the design team to get the requirements, how they want it to appear.

What they want it to do etc