The director of communications and the designer walked together across campus on the day of the website launch.
It had been a successful launch—the community was happy, the committee was happy, even the board of trustees was happy. And throughout the inevitable cycles of revisions and adjustments, the design had kept its integrity. So the designer was happy too.
As they walked, they talked leisurely about the process, and how they’d come to know each other well, and how in some ways the designer felt like he’d attended the client’s school himself. In fact, although the director of communications would never know this, under his dress shirt the designer wore a T-shirt bearing the name of the school whose campus he now walked across.
“Working with you has surprised me,” said the director of communications. ”I never thought a Web redesign could be an enjoyable process—every other director of communications I know has said it’s torture—but lo and behold, we made it, and it wasn’t that bad! Sure it had its rough spots, like anything else, but on the whole, I have to say, I really had a good time.”
“I did too,” said the designer. ”This isn’t always an easy job, and of course there were times that we got frustrated, but you really did a great job of managing everyone’s expectations, including mine. Thanks for sticking to your guns on some of those hard decisions—the site will do a better job for your school because of it.”
They walked a little longer in silence. Then the director of communications spoke again.
“There’s only one thing that continues to bother me.
“You and your team have been so responsive and attentive to us through this entire process, and I’m thankful for that. But in reviewing the history of our project, examining the path that we’ve walked together, I have noticed that during some phases of the project, there was only a single set of footprints. And what’s worse, these were the most difficult parts of the project— when the first round of comments on the redesign blog were really negative, or when the president wasn’t sure she liked the green, or when IT said they weren’t going to support PHP.
“As much as I like you and your company, I can’t believe that you would leave us to walk alone during such hard times. Why did you choose the worst parts of the project to desert us?”
The designer thought hard about this, and then smiled.
“My friend, I can understand why you would think that you’d been deserted. It is a terrible feeling to think that someone you depend on has forsaken you. But we would never do that. In fact, during those difficult times, White Whale was carrying you.”
The director of communications stopped walking—directly between the chapel and the dining hall, and in the shadow of a large statue of the school’s founder—and considered this.
“That is extraordinary,” said the director of communications. ”It’s above and beyond anything I would have asked for or expected. Did we pay extra for this level of service?”
The designer looked the director of communications deeply in the eyes, and smiled.
“Yes.”
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.