Design considerations
 

(This is a fictional analogy I sometimes use with clients when they piss me off).


Ok, you originally asked me to design and build a car. So, I designed and built the best f'ing car that anyone ever saw. It went 5000 miles per hour safely and the tires would never wear out. I demonstrated it and was told it was perfect, exactly what was needed.

A couple of days went by and you call me and say, yeah, we love the car, really but we can’t figure out how to make it fly. I replied, it’s a car, it isn’t supposed to fly but I will see what I can do. So, I took the car and attached a couple of wings and a tail and some flaps and made the thing fly.

It was still a pretty good car but was slower and more cumbersome. It flew ok, not as well as I would hope but it could take off, fly and land safely. I demonstrated it and you said, yeah, that’s exactly what we want, good job.

A couple of days later I get a call and you say, yeah we love the car-plane but when we drove it into the lake, it didn’t float. I replied that as far as I know, neither a car or a plane needs to be able to float but I will see what I can do. So, I took the car and bolted a solid bottom on to it, stuck a propeller on the rear and made it float and put put across the lake.

Now, it sucked as a car. Got about 1 mile to the gallon with a top speed of 10 mph. As a plane it would get off the ground but the odds of you landing safely were pretty low and as a boat, well, it floated but that was about it.

We started working on a car but what we have now is a Car-Plane-Boat. It has the characteristics of all 3 but doesn’t do the job of any of them worth a shit.

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That's all I got tonight.

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So true.

I sometimes use the phrase "if my mother had runways, she'd be an airport"! Start out with one thing, change it enough times and it becomes something else.

Scope creep is the enemy. Client control is the most important aspect of any successful project, that and cheerleading. Every successful project has a good cheerleader.

We often have to be our own cheerleader.

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Reminds me of this electrician who wanted a webpage for nothing.
It was just my hobby, right?

So, he would gladly charge me 100$ an hour to fix something at my house, but he wanted me to build him a webpage for a six-pack of beer or something.

I've stopped doing stuff like this, it just frustrates the hell out of me.
As you say, no matter how precise you do it to fulfill their wishes, they always think it should be able to do other stuff never mentioned when it's done.

I'm to old for this shit :-p

Jolly

I did a website for my roofer in exchange for $600 off the roof price, That one worked out ok.

Other than that I avoid building out sites for anybody. Too many freebies being advertised so people think the price of a site is a lot lower than it should be.


edited in: just went to look at the site I built out for him and there is some chinese site in place. Looks like he let the domain drop and it got picked up. That sucks. Went to his FTP and it is still active and my code is still out there. Not sure what is up with that.


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I did one for my contractor who we became good friends with while he was working on our house (he did A LOT of work at the old house). He ended up walking off the job for no reason one day & a couple weeks later, his new webguy emailed & asked me to transfer the domain over to him because I put everything in my name & he was still using it on all his ads & whatnot. So I said no, told him to call my lawyer & put up a page about how he fucked us & since we were friends, we didn't have a contract, so this was the only way I could get back at him.

I'll still do them for people - last one was a personal website for my chiro - but I still put them all in my name since no one's ever asked me to put it in theirs :D