Archive for July, 2010
Charging for your time
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010
I’ve had an interesting week, and it’s only Wednesday.
I was fully booked in for work this week when I checked my calendar last Friday. It was a well-paid week. I am not taking on any new clients, as I’m technically overbooked. I really love the projects I’m working on right now too. They’re challenging, interesting, and I like the people.
But, with the exception of regular maintenance stuff, all my booked in projects have been hit with delays. Most of them are understandable, and I’ve agreed to delay them. So, I’ve gone from a well-paid week, to making practically nothing.
Should you charge?
With clients that constantly change their schedules, I sometimes tell them that if they continue to schedule in time with me, I’ll have to charge them for that time, even if they don’t use it. My problem is, I feel guilty about this: I’m not working for them then.
But, at the same time, I want them to understand that it’s really inconvenient for me to not be able to depend on the work and be able to organize my time: I could take on other projects in those days. This week has been the first time it’s been an issue: usually I’ve got enough projects on the go that I can fill my time and offer them a little flexibility, which works well for everyone.
The question
Do you charge? How much do you charge? How do you let them know, to encourage them to be more diligent in their organization? Or, is it merely the price you pay for being a freelancer?
Practical imperfectionism
Monday, July 19th, 2010
I’ve always been pretty fast at getting things done.
My attempts at dress making have resulted in haphazardly created dresses, which got an initial 5 second sketch, and were then redesigned as I went, and changed features depending on my patience and (lack of) dressmaking skills.
I lament my quickness sometimes, especially as my career is now web design. Never have I met a bunch of perfectionists, who obsess on every detail, they look at me in horror and, I believe, can’t even comprehend how I could POSSIBLY leave something that is a few pixels out.
I learn fast, I design fast and I code up fast. I am pretty good about doing things semantically correct. But, if I know that doing it semantically correct would take me another 3 hours, and a slightly non-semantic method is perfect in seconds and I have a deadline, my choice is always clear.
BUT I miss a lot of the tiny details. I’ll do things to get them done to a standard of 90% or so, and then go back and fix them later. When I’m learning a new technology, I’m okay with not knowing the right way of doing things, as long as it doesn’t impede my ability to finish things.
Perfection is a luxury
Most projects are impeded by budgets and often times there’s money for new features, but not for polish. I know mine are, and while I’ll spend some of my own time (unpaid) to make it look a bit nicer, when you have as many projects on the go as I do, you have to stop somewhere. Close to perfect has to be “good enough”. When you’re on a small team trying to do a lot, you have to sacrifice absolute perfection for speed sometimes. That suits me just fine (it’s also the theory of shipping by Seth Godin: sometimes you’ve just got to ’ship’).
This doesn’t mean I go back and strive for perfection.
For example, during every release, I spend some time adding a few minuscule details in (a subtle border, moving things a few pixels or cleaning up some code, for example). Most people won’t notice, but occasionally I’ll hear, “It looks much better (for some reason they can’t put their finger on)”. I think you have to continually refine your front-end code. If you don’t, your code base gets completely unmanageable.
On the other hand, I know web designers who ALWAYS does it the absolutely right way the first time. Their designs are pixel perfect to their mocks. They won’t use hacks, but will spend HOURS figuring out the “proper way” to do something.
That’s okay too. Different styles work for different projects. I’m always more keen to get the user flowing through the site smoother, rather than making sure under the hood looks amazing. Surely that matters more to 99% of the people using the site (1% are the ones that view source)?
I’m not scared
I have no problem with using a hack “just for now”, or if it’s an area I don’t know much about. It also means that I’m not super scared of new technology. It’s just the way I get things done; practical imperfectionism works for me.
Saying that, I am a bit tired of too many projects at one time, and am working harder to give myself enough time to actually think about the details. Being imperfect is not a goal, just a necessary evil for the busy designer.
