Client communication and decision-making are essential and go hand in hand in creating a space that draws people in from all walks of life.

In the field of creating/designing a space for public use, communication with your client and team decision making are extremely important and are seen to go hand in hand. This method is the backbone of the design process, due to information that is passed back and forth between the client and the designer. This can make or break a project, because of how important communication is and how easy it is for something to be left out or missed from the communication process that should be in the design. The design team can then come together to brainstorm and decide on the elements that the client wants in the space to be implemented into the design. The type of information that is gathered or resulted from this method can range from design elements, grading/drainage problems or questions, and/or community engagement or aspects that can enhance spac

Steps

1.      Set-up introductory meeting with your client

2.      Meet with your client and get an idea of what they want to do with their space

3.      Set-up a site visit with the team to gain as much information and existing materials as possible to know the site like the back of your hand

4.      Start to plan/brainstorm community outreach methods to get the community involved

5.      Plan as much as possible with the team and give each team member specific parts of the design process to complete

6.      Meet with the community and gain feedback

7.      Plan designs with the team and remember to have a backup plan

8.      Have a follow-up meeting with your client to present designs and gain feedback to be able to make adjustments to the plans.

9.      Plan out the adjustments and then find out how you and the team will fix and make the design better.

10. Plan and present final designs and renderings to the community.

Application  

Our project at Westbrook Park in Cordele, GA was a perfect example of why the method of client communication and team decision-making are so important to the design process. The site of Westbrook Park is a very small-scale open park/future event space that has not been taken advantage of due to its downtown location and its proximity to the Albany State University Satellite Campus. Our client, Monica, has been super specific at all our meetings about the elements and ideas that she thinks can enhance the space of Westbrook Park. These elements were centered around the idea of simplifying the space and making a park that enhances the surrounding areas and pulls people into space. Monica mentioned that she wanted to limit the amount of soft-scape like sod and pine straw and wanted to create more of a plaza feel to the park with more hardscapes, which would in the future connect to an open-air event space building. The communication with Monica and how open she was to all the elements she wanted to include in the park, reflected in an easier design process and our group was able to take all of that information and create multiple designs, due to the decision-making of wanting to give Monica multiple options that reflected what was said during the communication process, like having an option that kept the majority of the hardscape elements or one design that started with a completely blank slate.

 As a group, planning/decision-making was extremely important, due to the short turnaround time for our final community engagement presentation on the site in Cordele. So, we broke down everything we needed to include in our designs and planned out three separate designs that all carried different meanings or elements that differentiated from each other. We created one design with existing elements to remain and to build around them, the second design was centered around creating a new space that included every element that our client mentioned in our meetings and the final design had the idea to push the boundaries and the budget. This idea was to give our client as many options as possible, before merging them into one final design.

The outcome of this method in our project turned out to be super successful for our group since the community of Cordele was so invested and interested in the idea of enhancing Westbrook Park. The communication was extremely useful and ended up making our design process easy and our final presentation successful, because of how open our client was to her wants and needs and how successful some of our community outreach methods and surveys were. We were able to gain a good bit of information and ideas from some community members through surveys that were able to give us additional elements or design ideas that we might not have thought about implementing in our final design. The only thing that I would have liked to do differently is to go and meet out with the community in person more, because some of the people at our final community presentation had some very thoughtful and creative feedback, especially on the idea of the mural and what historical context that wanted to include.

Conclusion 

Communication and teamwork decision-making are extremely important and useful in all phases of the design process and is important to stay on top of communication methods, reach out to the client as much as you need, create community outreach techniques, and set up meetings with community members to create relationships and be able to gain knowledge of what they want out of the site you are designing.  

Sources

Press, Inland. “DFC-Lots.Com #dfclots - Detroit Future City.” DFC-Lots.Com, 2015, detroitfuturecity.com/whatwedo/land-use/DFC-lots/assets/construction-packages/DFC_Field_Guide_Web-1.pdf.