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I regret my website redesign

mtlynch.io

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Re: I regret my website redesign

#371

Post by O__________O »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #289
mtlynch wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the problem here was in using their time effectively. Or, at least, it wasn't the high-order bit. Looking at their task breakdown, there weren't outrageous items like "10 hours - change a button color." The times were a little higher than I'd expect for devs who do this all the time, but not egregiously so. I think I overspent on this project, but I attribute it more to poor communication and poor manag…

I think you're being very generous. "You don't fit our usual workflow so no further work will be done unless you pay us a retainer like the big guys do" is simply not a good faith position to take half way into a project. They gave you just enough extra attention to hook you in at the start, then kept stringing you along for more cash, with a few token deductions to make it seem like it was all just very unfortunate.…

>> "You don't fit our usual workflow so no further work will be done unless you pay us a retainer like the big guys do" is simply not a good faith position to take half way into a project.

Good contract would have made this claim by the agency both immediately not material, a breach of contract - and in my opinion, may even be a type of fraud called bait-and-switch, which is illegal.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#372

Post by pfalke »

The same applies within large companies. If you’re within a business team, and you’re requesting work from a design team/engineering team/data science team, you’ll face the same issues with scope creep + churn + competing priorities etc. I wouldn’t blame agencies for being bad, this is people being people plus a bit of other things. Anticipating and steering around/against these dynamics has been one of my biggest career learnings over the last years. The author has some good suggestions for how to do it — if you work in a large company, take another look and ask yourself if they don’t also apply to your work!

Re: I regret my website redesign

#373

Post by WorldMaker »

latortuga wrote: post #169
deltarholamda wrote: post #89

You know how, during a big programming project, you have to keep the devs from going "this codebase has a lot of technical debt, let's rebuild the whole thing using Rust and Kubernetes and Deno and move the hosting to Azure and switch databases and use microservices and..."? Designers are exactly the same way. Just as technical fiddling is fun and interesting, making new designs from scratch is just as fun and intere…

I was ready to fire the agency the moment the author mentioned they were going off script and building whatever they wanted. This was a huge, blinking red flag for me. Why would you keep paying someone when they're doing work you didn't ask for, doing work that doesn't align with your goals, and ignoring what you say?

That seems to be the point where sunk cost fallacy strikes hard in the post to me. They had paid $X for "80% of the first milestone of work" and that sunk cost locks them in to everything else that happens. They seemed too fearful from that point onward that if they fired the agency and brought in a new agency or freelancer that they would start from square 1 and do all of the previous work (and spend) over again.

The sunk cost fallacy suggests that sometimes is better for you if you should just accept existing losses, accept you've already sunk those costs and won't get them back, and move on. I don't know what their contract looked like with the agency, but an 80% of a logo design sounds like a perfect deliverable that you can safely fire the existing team and take the 80% deliverable to a new designer, not start from scratch, and ask them to do a final polish step. I would have cut losses there, but of course it is much easier to armchair quarterback from hindsight and different perspectives than if you are in the middle of it fighting that gut feeling that you've already invested so much and can't "afford" to cut losses.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#374

Post by hinkley »

deltarholamda wrote: post #89

You know how, during a big programming project, you have to keep the devs from going "this codebase has a lot of technical debt, let's rebuild the whole thing using Rust and Kubernetes and Deno and move the hosting to Azure and switch databases and use microservices and..."? Designers are exactly the same way. Just as technical fiddling is fun and interesting, making new designs from scratch is just as fun and intere…

I used to think this whole pattern was just Chasing the Shiny with a heavy dose of aversion, but something I noticed was that on a redesign, the management tends to give you the benefit of the doubt for a while. There’s a brief period where everything is easier socially before the ugliness starts up again.

Getting a redesign approved can be the difference between having a long project on your resume and people asking you why you job hopped so much.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#376

Post by laurent123456 »

mtlynch wrote: post #220
jetheredge wrote: post #51

As the owner of a digital product agency, this is really hard to read. It is such a shame that an agency would do this to you. I know you felt like they "did their best", but by setting you up with unrealistic expectations out of the gate they essentially guaranteed that everyone was going to walk away unhappy. Besides, when you go to an agency communication/transparency/team of experts is what you are paying for! Yo…

Thanks for reading! Yeah, I don't think the agency is blameless here, but I also don't think they're malicious or dishonest. I think they just overestimated their ability to scale down their workflows to a project smaller than their typical gig.

Well they know they've done an awful job, you know it too, but they happily kept the $45K. If they were as honest as you say, they would have refunded some of it.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#377

Post by koshergweilo »

kypro wrote: post #119

I don't want to rub salt in the wounds here, but that design is extremely mediocre. The primary mistake here imo was to think you needed professional web design in the first place. You didn't. Professional web design is best suited to companies with a strong brand or websites with complicated UX/UI that needs wireframing. You're just a small business selling KVMs D2C. That doesn't need anything fancy. There are some…

> There are some really good (free) AI logo generators out there you can use to generate logos very similar (perhaps even better) than this.

How have I never heard of these. Which ones are good though? I couldn't find any free ones

Re: I regret my website redesign

#378

Post by deaddodo »

ncallaway wrote: post #327
mtlynch wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you rethinking your philosophy after wasting $46,000? Honestly, no. I think I certainly made mistakes on this project, but I don't think trusting devs to use their time effectively was the problem. >> you get into disputes about what is or isn't in scope, > This is to your advantage as the one who is able to withhold payment when delivery isn't up to your standards, and you are protected contractually. With pur…

> so if I approach competent agencies demanding a milestone-based contract for $7-15k, they'd just tell me to get lost Yep, exactly that. And, for a dev agency (I'm not as familiar with how design would want to structure this), you'd either need _very_ detailed and specific requirements before we consider quoting the project, or we're going to need an up-front discovery phase (that will run a few thousand dollars any…

If a contractor told me to "get lost" over a $15k contract for a three-page rework + redesign; I'd just respond "gladly".

That is a dead simple ask and something that could easily be handled by one front-end dev + one designer in 1-2 weeks of half-time work. That easily covers their salaries (in LA, at least) + 30-50% overhead. You would probably pad that out to a month for other jobs + unknowables; but I would be absolutely shocked if an agency quoted anyone any more time than that for such a basic and trivial task. For a first time contract, that's a pretty good deal to entice word of mouth referrals + potential future work.

This isn't work that needs discovery or intricate scoping. It's basic work that anyone with web development experience can scope out and that a shop focused on that definitely has extensive experience on. Better than that, if you review his original scope guidelines, he makes it clear he specifically doesn't want any more work done than those three pages. All of the complicated work (logo redo + rebranding) he was talked into by the agency, along with random things like additional color palettes, extended page attributes, etc.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#379

Post by hinkley »

Something about the mikado method that makes it one of my favorite tools is that you can often get partial credit for an idea that doesn’t completely pan out.

I’m building a prototype for switching the framework we use to another one. In the process of trying to reach feature parity, I’ve been pulling out bits of logic that are coupled with the old framework and putting them into other libraries. At the end of this we’ll have better feature parity between services even if I end up abandoning the framework change. By moving the code around I may find solutions to the functionality we need that the framework makes very difficult to implement.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#380

Post by [deleted] »

shepardrtc wrote: post #231
mtlynch wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for reading! I have a different philosophy when it comes to hiring in that I assume the people working with me are honest and they're motivated to do their jobs well. I'm paying for their time, and I assume they'll use their time effectively. If they can't use their time effectively, I terminate the hire, but I don't try to fix it with different policies. I agree that there are payment schemes that will cause…

The only goal of a company that has billable hours is to rack up billable hours. If that involves building an amazing piece of work, then that's fine. But if it can be done by blowing off the client and feeding them bullshit, then that's fine too. I watched consulting companies bilk literally millions of dollars out of a household name company by simply lying to people that didn't know any better. I really respect yo…

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