Today, we are going to examine the top 3 keys to successfully work with clients, SMEs, and more. We will specifically discuss how to apply these tips to designer based jobs such as web design, instructional design, multimedia design, but they can also be applied to any field where you must work with others.

If you follow these tips, it will boost your success at work and/ or improve the success of your business and distinguish you from 95% of people in your industry because most people don’t utilize these three essentials. Let’s get started!

#3 Patience

Patience is INCREDIBLY essential to successfully working with clients, SMEs, and more, but what do I mean by this?!

Let’s say a client wants you to design a website for them, and you’re excited to work with them. You meet with your client and gather all the information you need to begin the design. They provided you with a few websites that they like and would want their website to be similar to. After all the research/ discovery and planning stages are complete, the client and you are ready to begin designing! You spend HOURS creating a website design for your client that you think is absolutely AMAZING.

The next week comes around, and you’re ready to present this new design. You are ready to get your client’s approval, so you can begin development that same day. However, about 5 to 10 minutes into the presentation, the five people you are presenting to begin to express how much they DISLIKE your design, and they aren’t polite about it!

Your natural reaction is to get upset and try to convince the client why this design is good and that they should use it. This is exactly what you do not want to do. Again, this is EXACTLY what not to do. This will likely lead to negative conflict, and if the client does not like what you present, there’s a 99.5% chance you can’t change their mind.

Instead, the first thing you must do is remember that the client not liking your design is not a personal attack. With everything you create, you must remove your personal affinity to it and remember that not everyone likes what you like.

The next step is to encourage the client to express why they don’t like it. Personally, I like to tell clients or SMEs that I work with that I won’t be upset if they don’t like something. I tell them that I want to know if they dislike something because it helps us make the best website, course, video, etc. possible!

With the client present in the meeting, go back to the drawing board. Create – or use one you have already – a notes page where you can document everything they say they don’t like about the site. It’s important to make sure your client can see this notes page because it shows them that you are listening to them.

Next, encourage the client to express how they think it should look. Provide them with whatever they need to express themselves. You could have them draw it on paper, provide you with more examples, etc. If you have time in the meeting, take their requests, and begin a new design.

Keep in mind that you may need to make five designs before the client is happy. The important thing is to make sure the client is always happy. Obviously, if they want green text on a yellow background, you need to tell them why you can’t do that, so remember to use proper judgement. But most of the time the client will want something reasonable, but it just takes them a variety of visuals to get there.

Finally, there are many ways to use your patience. Overall, use it to keep the client happy and remember to remove your affinity to whatever you are helping the client do because the most important thing is to make what the client wants; it’s NOT about you!

#2 Relationships

It’s extremely easy to forget to build personal relationships with whoever you work with on a project or assignment. It’s important to not get into what I call ‘robot mode’ and forget to personalize with your client and/ or SME. EVERYBODY loves to talk about themselves and their interests, so encourage them to share what they did over the weekend, how they started in their field or business, how their kid’s basketball team is doing, etc. Keep the 80-20 rule in mind; you speak 20% of the time, and the client speaks 80% of the time.

However, you want to take in on a case by case basis; some clients may not want to personalize, and it’s important not to spend too much time talking about topics that don’t have to do with the project at hand. Analyze each situation, and determine what’s best.

Finally, you want to build relationships for a number of reasons.

• Building relationships increases the likelihood of success of the project.
• Building relationships builds rapport, and the client will trust you more.
• Building relationships makes the project more enjoyable.
• Building relationships builds enthusiasm for the project.

#1 Communication

Without exceptional communication, the project will either be a failure, or it will not be as good as it should be. Ensure that everything is communicating with the client. I can already hear the haters saying, “So you’re saying that I need to speak to my client about every little thing? That’s impossible!” No, what I’m saying is that everything needs to be readily available to a client.

For example, if you are making a course as an instructional designer, make sure that talking points from meetings are documented along with items that need to be completed. Then, send out official emails with a brief description of what is being working on, and you can now include the notes page with further details on what is being worked on at any given time. Correctly show your client or SME where they can view the notes and how to communicate with you directly.

Now, instead of relying on word of mouth conversations, everything is extremely transparent. This prevents important things from being forgotten, provides peace of mind to everyone involved, and it shows your resolve to successfully complete a project.

Conclusion

Use patience, relationships, and communication to successfully work with clients, SMEs, and etc. when working on projects for your job and/ or business. It will increase morale, quality of work, build rapport and trust, and make for a much more enjoyable experience.

Simply using these three tips will distinguish you from 95% of people in your respective industry because most people don’t utilize these tools. If you have any questions, leave a comment, and I will respond to you!

I’m a professional web developer, instructional, UX/ UI, and multimedia designer. I’m the founder and CEO of “Kalman Web Design” where I practice professional web development and more. If you need my services, please reach out here: https://thomaskalman.com/contact.html.

Whether you are an instructional designer, learning developer, teacher, or professor, you can can use these tips to help learners engage better with your content. Although these tips will help, it will take time and practice to really grasp them and implement them in the most effective way possible. Don’t overthink it; just give it shot!

The Learner’s Perspective

The largest issue in instructional design, learning development, teaching, lecturing, and anything learning and/ or education related is the disconnect between the learners and the designer(s) and instructor(s). What do I mean by this? Simply, I mean that all the people making and teaching the learning content have absolutely NO idea what the learners and students like and want.

Today, I am going to FORCE you to leave your comfort zone. Today, I’m going to MAKE you start thinking about EVERYTHING from the perspective of the learner. Today, I’m going to PUSH you to be different and better than everyone else. Today, I’m GOING to make you upset. However, if this information is applied consistently, IT WILL WORK.

What Student’s ACTUALLY Want

What student’s want in their courses can be summed up this way:

1. Student’s want something that is free to use.
2. Student’s want interactive content that isn’t boring AS HECK.
3. Student’s want content that their instructor actually took the time to make themselves.
4. Student’s want to digest as much information as possible in the least amount of time possible because they are busy people.

What Student’s DO NOT Want

What student’s don’t want can be summed up this way:

1. Student’s do not want to pay for 3rd party content like a textbook, website, or really anything.
2. Student’s do not want to spend 5 hours a night reading and watching videos.
3. Student’s do not want to miss out on their lives because you’re piling up so much work on them.
4. Student’s do not want to digest content in a boring and old-fashioned format.
5. Student’s do not want to spend unnecessary time completing course work.

*Note* I can hear all the nay-sayers out there groaning, “yOu ShOulD conDuCT suRvEys.” I get it; surveys are useful. If you want to – and have the time to – go ahead. The issue is that students are too afraid to give their honest opinion about your course or other courses because they are afraid of upsetting people and that affecting their grade.

The saying remains true. You don’t ask a fish how to catch fish; you ask a fish turned fisherman how to fish because he has experience being a fish and a fisherman. In this case, you ask the guy who is and was an instructional designer and learning specialist when he was and is in school. Yes, that’s me.

Textbooks

99% of the time, information is planned, designed, developed, reviewed/ tested, and deployed without ever thinking about this information from the student perspective. An example of this is using a textbook in your course. Textbooks are old fashioned, outdated, expensive, heavy, and EXTREMELY lazy.

Now, sometimes information from a textbook is necessary and even essential; I understand this. However, this is where you need to start looking at it from a student’s perspective, and I’ll start by giving you my perspective when I actually was a student.

When I was a student, I would avoid buying the textbook at all costs for a number of reasons. And this is all from the perspective of being a student in college, but it is just as applicable to any type of learning in an instructor led or any other type of course.

1. Every time we used a textbook in a course, I can’t remember a time that we actually used it for more than about 10 pages worth of content. Why would I pay $80-$150 on something I don’t want and that we would likely only use a couple of times?
2. I was a broke college student, and I liked eating A LOT better than textbooks. And even if I HAD the money, I would rather save it for rent.
3. There’s SOOO much free content out there that can be used to learn, nowadays; why would I spend EXTRA money when I’m already paying so much for the course?

*Behold your ears because this one is harsh.* When an instructor would tell me we needed a textbook, the instructor was effectively saying this:

1. “I know most of you are broke – and even if you weren’t – I don’t care; pay the $100 for the textbook!”
2. “I’m too lazy to make my own learning material and/ or find free resources that can supplement my lectures, so go buy this $120 book!”
3. “I make 20% commission on every book that I force a student buy. Go buy my book, so I can make even more money!”

Outdated and BORING Content

Another example of content that shouldn’t be used is outdated slideshows, extremely long videos made by other people, printouts from the Vietnam War era. Basically, anything that’s old and/ or boring needs to get thrown out. Lucky for you, there are simple solutions and tactics that you can use to increase engagement and success.

Developing New Content

I’ve said a lot about using textbooks. However, textbooks can and should still be used as a tool to teach a course, especially when they have valuable information. Instead of forcing students to buy a textbook, you can use it as a supplemental resource. You as the instructor and/ or designer can have the textbook and create learning materials using the book. The same goes for any old content that may still be relevant. You can still use it, but repackage it into a new and interactive format that is appealing to the learner.

You don’t want to plagiarize, so add your own twist to the information. Every textbook and piece of content has information in it on how you can use the content, so make sure you are following the correct rules. If it turns out that you can’t use information from your textbook, use free resources online, use what you already know as an instructor, or find a new textbook that is more inclined to letting instructors use it as a resource where the information can be personalized. If you are lucky enough to have an instructional designer or learning specialist working with you, utilize them to do all the technical work while you focus on gathering and deciding on content to use.

#4 Interactive Presentations

Next, you can make a presentation in one of my favorite tools – Articulate Storyline – and add animations, narrations, and custom images and graphics. Now, you have an interactive and customized piece of content that will help engage learners much better than saying, “Go buy this book, and read pages 23-45.” *NEWS ALERT* Most people are not going to read the book even if you assign to them, so making your own interactive content that can be used becomes even more essential.

#3 Short Videos

If you don’t have a tool like Articulate Storyline, you can make a short – keyword short – video discussing what the students need to know with images from free to use image sites like Pexels.com or Unsplash.com and/ or samples of some of your own work. For example, if you’re teaching students basic JavaScript, you can make a short video for each topic they need to learn. If you want them to learn about variables, Booleans, and if statements in JavaScript, scrap the textbook and create 3 short videos under 5 minutes long explaining each one. I know 5 minutes could be tight in some situations, so if you need more time, that’s fine. However, remember that you want to keep them as short as possible. Even if you don’t know anything about JavaScript, it doesn’t matter. What you need to take from this is:

1. Make short videos under 5 minutes (or as short as possible)
2. Make a separate video for each smaller topic because it will drive engagement and break up material into more manageable segments.
3. Don’t overcomplicate it. Make something simple and short that gets the point across.

#2 Infographics

Another option could be to make an infographic. For example, if you want the student to learn about the differences between whales and sharks, a textbook is unnecessary. Create a simple infographic in an easy to use tool like Adobe Express or Canva.com. Don’t overcomplicate it; create something that’s simple and gets your point across. There’s plenty of free graphics and templates to start with on both.

#1 Gamification

There’s a lot of ways to gamify a course, and this subject will need its own article. Today, we are going to focus on a beginner and extremely easy to implement way of gamifying your course. The tool I will discuss is Kahoot.it. It may seem juvenile or even dumb, but trust me; students LOVE competing with each other.

Now, I know you’re pressed for time, so I’m going to describe how you can get started in 30 minutes. Let’s start the timer!

1. Create a Kahoot account and login.
2. Based on your course material, create 3 quizzes that are 8-15 questions long.
3. If your course is 15 weeks long, give your students the first quiz at around the two week mark, the second quiz around the 7 week mark, and the third quiz around the 13 week mark.
4. Decide the prize you want to give to the students that place 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. I recommend giving 15, 10, and 5 points extra credit on a test or project.

*NOTE* Let the students know about the competition and incentive during the first week of the semester. This will encourage students to study to beat fellow classmates. This simple method of gamification will drive engagement, success, and bonding between students!

Whether you make a video, an interactive presentation, an infographic, and/ or gamify, any of these methods will be more successful than an outdated textbook or old worn out content. Trust me when I say that students and learners will appreciate and respect the effort their instructor (and designers) made to create custom content that is free and more relatable to their wants and needs. Lastly, students may not admit it, but they like instructors who put in time and effort to make their course more affordable and customized. It will help distinguish you (and the designer) from the boring and lazy courses everyone else is making and reusing all the time.

Currently, I am a full time instructional designer for a college in Texas, so I have knowledge of the adult learning theories, Agile/ Addie methodologies, and more. However, the most success I have had with getting students to engage and creating better content is by thinking about everything from the student perspective.

Don’t misinterpret what I’m saying; all of the methodologies and methods are useful, but you want to lead everything from the learner’s perspective.

I’m a professional web developer, instructional, UX/ UI, and multimedia designer. I’m the founder and CEO of “Kalman Web Design” where I practice professional web development and more. If you need my services, please reach out here: https://thomaskalman.com/contact.html.