There has been a lot of conversation/debate recently in the industry regarding “spec work”. The panel, “Is spec work evil?” at SXSW this year as well as emerging online communities such as 99designs and GeniusRocket are only adding to the conversation, for better or worse. We by no means are looking to get into the debate or even truly express an opinion one way or another; the truth is we have pretty mixed feelings on the topic. Fundamentally speaking though, it isn’t about wanting to do spec work or even believing in the idea; it is just something we can’t do more than something we’ve arguably decided not to do. To do “web design” the way we do it (the way we believe it should be done), spec work just isn’t possible; it isn’t feasible or appropriate.
“Web Design” is the summation of parts, of critical elements that together make a unique, usable and stylish experience reflective of the organizational objectives with respect to the end user. To truly accomplish that you’ll need much more than a creative brief or a requirements document. You’ll need a competitive market analysis, content inventory, business objectives, audience segments, use-cases, user-personas as well as a wealth of other information that begins to define the basis for a problem before articulating a solution.
A website is much more than a pretty picture; every product manager, information architect, usability and user-experience designer out there will defend and articulate the importance of understanding the entity before designing the entity. We simply can’t draw the picture without knowing the subject; and in the context of web design, the subject is very complex. Web design is not about art, it is about visual communication – visual communication as a strategy. This is a strategy that can’t be articulated over a word document; it is one that involves stakeholder and executive interviews, one that involves and understanding of the organization, their objectives, their constituents and that relationship.
Misunderstanding of the use of Spec Work
Many misunderstand how spec work is used (for the most part). For most large-scale organizations, spec work is nothing more than early design research; think of it as low-fidelity common-sense based mood boards. Many organizations will seek out spec work only as draft conceptual ideas for the basis of a real design conversation. Essentially taking many early non-strategic “visual” ideas and using them as a spring-board for conversation when developing a strategy; getting the common-sense lowest-common-denominator ideas out and in front early.
Spec work is rarely real work (work meant to be final and utilized), and in that context it really isn’t appropriate work for most. Most are not in the business of creating design drafts for other designers to create design solutions; that is where the misunderstanding of the use of spec work resonates the most.
It is when spec work is utilized to find and execute design solutions without the consideration of the critical summation of parts, the all-inclusive entity that is web design, that the concept fundamentally fails. It is that failure that prevents us from participating in spec work to begin with. Spec work typically asks for a pretty picture and we know web design to be more than that; that is why we can’t do spec work.
Andy Stratton
March 24th 2009
“We simply can’t draw the picture without knowing the subject; and in the context of web design, the subject is very complex.”—well said, Martin.
I couldn’t agree more and always enjoying other professionals’ opinions on the matter—
Emily Lewis (http://www.ablognotlimited.com/articles/you-get-what-you-pay-for/) has a great, in your face post about Spec Work as well—
I enjoy the comparisons to other service industries, and the odd paradigm we face in digital/interactive industries.
Another contributing factor I’ve run into is poor agencies and freelancers burning clients, leaving them alone and scared in a world of limitless, invisible, brick-and-mortar-less vendors.
At that I can understand how Spec Work can sometimes be that “physical” manifestation of competence—although, my response in that situation is a link to my portfolio ;]
Martin Ringlein
March 24th 2009
I completely agree Andy; thanks for the follow-up comment.
It just seems odd that many designers are fearful that spec work will devalue or take business away from them. They get just as upset about template shops—listen, Kinkos can print business cards, but they’ll never print my business card and they’ll never put a “good” printer out of business. The same is with spec work—heck, you can create a website in Microsoft Word, but that doesn’t worry me; it is the right thing for a certain type.
Victoria Pickering
March 24th 2009
Thanks for discussing this issue in a logical way, looking at what works for your agency and your type of clients and their scope of work. Spec work is a market reality, and I don’t think it helps to bring an emotional or moral response to it, which some “spec work is evil” approaches do. The fact is that a large number of people and organizations participate in spec work, both as providers and as purchasers - and while for some of them this is a mistake either financially or in terms of quality, for others it works out well - otherwise, the market would not be thriving.
Trying to stop the spec market or deny its success is analogous to other industries trying to ignore or downplay the success of other ways of doing business (U.S. auto makers, etc.). The best way to handle new, and sometimes revolutionary, sources of competition is to think smarter and better about how to deliver high quality and service at prices clients can afford.
Darren Ansley
March 24th 2009
Very well said. I really like the tone of this post and the fact that you don’t debate the evilness or benefits of spec work.
When designing great web sites and applications, collaborative decision making between the company and client is an integral part to the process. Spec work essentially supercedes that process, making it a very inappropriate tool for developing a strategy that can be executed upon.
Tom Osborne
March 25th 2009
Amen to this, Martin. I’ve always felt that there is room for quicker, cheaper design in the market and like your analogy of the Kinko’s business model. In the end, you get what you pay for and some will want “quicker, cheaper” and some will want “thorough, deeper”. Our job as designers is to help educate existing and potential clients on our methods to help them understand the methods to our perceived madness.
One question I have regarding this. It used to be that the term spec referred to someone designing out high fidelity work and then pitching it to attain more work. Some pitfalls were that it was a sure way to burn out the team before the work started, the client could think the work is done when the thought put into it has only been surface level, and nothing is stopping them from stealing your ideas and handing them to someone else. As I understand it, the examples with 99designs and Genius Rocket are more “crowdsourcing” than “spec”. Do you see the terms as being the same thing? Is that what others are saying?
Martin Ringlein
March 26th 2009
Tom,
Thanks for the comment and great question!
I think “crowd sourcing” as a term is a relatively new addition to the “spec work” debate. Spec work, for us, has always been one group asking another group to perform work before hiring that group to actually do the work (so, doing work for free in pursuit of winning a contract to be paid for extending that same work). A lot of agencies will do this in an effort to seem more attractive and potentially win the project award—however there is a greater cost associated with doing this and I think you did a good job of pointing out some of those pitfalls.
What 99designs and GeniusRock have done is open this idea up to the masses and allow for (and promote) the idea of spec work on a much larger (outside the agency and into the freelancer) scale. These sites are when crowd-sourcing meet spec work; not necessarily one or the other.
Crowd-sourcing independent of spec work would be getting a handful of designers together to design something and take the best in breed or create some Frankenstein hybrid. When introducing spec work into the model, it now asks those same designers to do it for free and promises only a few (sometimes only one) the promise of some monetary value in return for their work.
In my opinion, 99designs and GeniusRocket are more about spec work and crowd-sourcing, because often times each design is looked at independently and it isn’t the “wisdom of the crowds” that creates a solution. Essentially they’ve just created an open-market spec work management system (for better or worse).