Some of the best pieces of advice that I’ve ever received from Steve Jobs (not personally, of course) is his view on product development and the customer. Perhaps one of the better known ones is this:
You can’t just ask a customer what they want and try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.
I have found this rampantly true in web development, and in all my years of working in this space I’ve let go of my hopes of ever achieving the goal of providing for the customers’ wants.
And this is often true in the ministry context as well. Oftentimes the ministries know exactly what they need in terms of their ministry goals, mission, vision, programs and initiatives, but they don’t always know what they want on the websites they think they need (and sometimes that’s the problem; they don’t need a website).
I give a lot of credit, though, to my particular ministry (and I’m sure you do the same for yours) and their creative genius; they’ve got a good ideas, but oftentimes they’re looking to me (and you), oh creative web designer, to help them navigate their dreams and make them real.
Essentially, just like Steve said, they don’t know what they want but I’m sure as heck guaranteed they know what their problems are, so the goal is to find the problems that they face and create solutions.
That’s what makes web development so fun; it’s less about giving icecream to a whining toddler and more about providing solutions to hungry and passionate and mature ministry leaders. I definitely like the latter.
[Image from Ajawin]
man, that's so true…trying to figure out what the customer wants…get as close as we can…
That's a great point. The hard part is convincing ministers to jump on board with this idea.
nice metaphor… and so true. Everyone wants a website… only a few need a website. Those that think they need one… oftentimes are just looking for better pimpage of their ministry. There are other ways to do that… a website isn't always the answer. Even though us web geeks would have you believe otherwise sometimes