Not sure where to start with this, but I guess the background is that we finally picked an agency to design our flagship product.

The agency’s director is a personal friend of the Riddler. This should have been the first ‘uh-oh’ moment except that when we met him, he seemed like a genuinely decent guy who understood the industry and our concerns.

He never provided a portfolio.

However, Riddler vouched for his design capabilities and given that at least 6 out of 10 times he can assess something good as good, we had to trust him.

Also, the other option (which Riddler was more aggressively pushing for) was to hire a bunch of university kids who only had experience designing rave posters. So there really was no option.

Anyways, the plan was:

  • Agency understands how our site will work
  • Agency submits wireframe for our review
  • We approve it
  • Agency develops 2 designs
  • We pick one
  • Agency further develops the design details
  • We approve it
  • We’re done
  • Profit

How has it played out so far?

  • We explain project
  • Agency submits 3 wireframes, each with text on a background colour, with horribly wrong content
  • We itemize the problems
  • Agency re-submits the same wireframes, with slightly different background colours
  • We itemize the problems, quite explicitly

Next, the agency provides navigation ‘explorations’:

  • We receive 23 individual PDF files
  • They’re all the same, with slight font size differences
  • They still can’t get basic usability right

We press for the ‘design’. Response? “We’ve blown the budget on all this extra work.”

So, where’s the design? Like graphic items… icons… buttons, etc. ie: anything more than copying/pasting text on to the page into a wireframe. “That’s not in the budget.”

And, the budget for which we received some horrible unusable wireframes for 2 page types that never once demonstrated a design concept?

$17,000.

Nice friend.