IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2012 - 24

“speAK to Your cLient in His or Her oWn LAnGuAGe.”

“At the end of the day, people want that emotional connection, to know that they’re being heard, to feel there’s more than just the signing of the check.” the dialogues in What Clients Want underscore opportunities to nurture such chemistry. the university of Wyoming, Laramie, chose Lewis.tsurumaki.Lewis to design its bright and textural sullivan Family student center because client and designer had worked together previously. With rios clementi Hale studios, Los Angeles production company Act 4 entertainment also went the recidivist route. Geographic proximity propelled Facebook’s selection of san Francisco–based studio o+A to refashion a 150,000squarefoot former laboratory into its new headquarters at stanford research park. swiss Army knife manufacturer Wenger conducted facetoface meetings with Gensler’s Denver office to realize its firstever flagship store in boulder, colorado. indeed, good feelings—and intel—are cultivated throughout the life of a project. o+A submitted its proposals to company wide polls using Facebook as a platform for voting and updates. (Lesson: speak to your client in his or her own language.) paris department store printemps hired nonFrenchspeaking Yabu pushelberg to overhaul its famous boulevard Haussmann emporium based on the relevance and strength of the firm’s portfolio. throughout and after completion, the client measured the design’s success according to a hopedfor 20percent increase on merchandise turnover, which the project surpassed. (Lesson: With benchmarking comes a sense of assuredness.) if What Clients Want does not describe systematic methods for winning a client’s insight and emotional investment, like discovery phases or midstream charettes, that’s because Durst was especially keen on clients who challenged the signature approach of a namebrand studio. in turn, “there are instances in which executives want the obviously beautiful, effective space, but they walk away from a project having their culture—and their minds—changed.”

Feldman hopes that the book will pass from the hands of students and associates to their boss’s bosses, producing a groundswell of understanding and support in the c suites of America. perhaps good clients can be made before they even have a school of hard knocks to commission. speaking of schools, the book will be distributed at various design institutions, with the idea to augment (and improve upon) existing cultural anthropology, change management, and organizationalbehavior curricula. Durst recognizes that the road to enlightenment may be longer than a single publication; most people have difficulty interpolating the lessons of case studies, no matter how com pelling. “there is value and equity in the relationship between the client and designer, but the ageold dilemma is how do you measure it?” simply put, quantitative data has gravitas. but beyond LeeD scorecards or sales generated by French fashionistas, that data is hard to categorize and count. so, expect What Clients Want sequels. While this volume covered every project type—retail, corporate, institutional, hospitality— future editions will dig deeper into a single sector. With each conversation and investigation, iiDA gets a little closer to ident ifying and codifying key terms that guarantee a successful human event. one thing is for sure: Good designers and good clients make one another.
Just what do clients want, exactly? The answer—which may surprise you—will also be the topic of a new column to appear regularly in Perspective. In future issues, we’ll pull back the curtain on a diverse roster of client types, from realestate leaders and hospitality giants to manufacturers and dealers.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2012