Agency pitches and user experience design

Agency pitches and user experience design

A nice man called \"David\":http://twitter.com/zeroinfluencer tweeted me once with a link to a video of Russell Davies talking about interestingness, size and creativity. In the video, Russell refers to \"a project I did a couple of years ago\":http://blogs.mtengine.com/peaharvest/2006/08/news_from_hull.html for Birdseye. I just wanted to thank David as it's always nice to know there are people out there who share the passions I get out of bed for:-)\n\nI've been thinking about advertising agencies big and small, partly because of the LGFE reunion, and partly because I'm pretty much always stuck in the thick of one or other user-centred design process debate.\n\nAt the time, I sent the following question to a recruiter as we were talking about maybe working together. I still don't know the answer, but I'm pretty sure it's tough for a passionate user experience person to work without discovery... \n\nHere was the question I had in mind:\n\nbq. 80% of the magic of user-centered design happens in the discovery phase, prior to the IA proposing the information model for an interface. As most pitches involve going to the client with a ready-made proposal, agencies tend to find it difficult to produce user-centered design. Does your agency have a strategy in place to overcome this challenge?\n\nI suppose the answer is \"win the business then shove the UE thinking through the door\" but I can't imagine \"this guy\":http://blog.jjg.net/, \"this guy\":http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2007/08/25/groups-for-twitter-or-a-proposal-for-twitter-tag-channels/, \"this guy\":http://madebymany.co.uk/author/tim-malbon, \"this woman\":http://interestingsnippets.tumblr.com/post/231204536/google-was-built-on-a-foundation-of-larrys-and or \"this guy\":http://tailwind.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/the-new-homescreen-for-facebook-application-on-iphone/ playing it like that...\n\nAre you a senior agency bod? How do you handle ideas of value, resonance, co-creation and needs assessment? I'm still working on the question :-)