 All right It's three o'clock now Let's get going because we've got quite a bit to cover And so I applaud you all for making it this late in the day on the last day and especially finding your way down the tunnel system to get here I'll be honest. I almost got lost on my way here, too So first off We've all been there You get a call from a client mid project and they tell you there's been some changes There's been some changes in the business. There's been some changes in management There's been some changes that are coming down the pipeline and you instantly know that this can only mean one thing The pivot right and so everybody knows the feeling of the pivot, right? and the pivot is the truest test of the client and Agency relationship it brings the changes From the business from the budget Maybe even the staff involved all of that comes together And then how you manage these pivots is what strengthens your relationship with the client and so today as we're talking about design systems documentation discovery All of it is built around the idea of how can we use these tools before we ever start coding? The actual website to build relationships that can form a strong bond and last through those pivots I'll give you an example of a pivot that we went through and you can see kind of why we did what we did through this We had a client that we were working with We had just won a large project with them to redo their entire website and they give us a call and they say We just got acquired so our whole brand is changing so everything that we thought we were going to do Completely tossed out the window. We said all right. We'll work with you. We worked all the way through it Launched the website big success and a few months later. They say hey, we got divested and now we're back out as a different brand Completely separate and we had to pivot yet again the website, but actually had to split the website in two One to keep part of the brand at the company that was acquired or where the acquisition occurred And then the other one at the the spin-off And so all of a sudden we're having to move systems. We're having to move websites But we did it flawlessly and the the client was very impressed with how we did it and it was solely because A we have a really good team that's strong and able to do this But the second reason is that team implemented a lot of what i'm going to talk about today And if you have some of these things in place Those type of pivots become a no it's not a big deal and if you can give that reassurance to the client They trust you even more and they'll they'll bring you more business so Today we're going to talk about design systems. What is a design system? What isn't a design system? For those real quick raise of hands. How many people know what a design system is? Awesome, how many people have implemented a design system? Good, I like that So we're going to talk not only about the design systems with the process like who's involved. Why are they involved? What should they be doing? Documentation everyone's favorite thing to do. I know But we're going to talk a bit about documentation And then we're going to get into discovery and the reason why I put discovery in here and Do we lose? And we're back. All right One of the reasons why we're going to talk about discovery is the The idea of how can you take a design system the documentation and everything that we're going to talk about and wrap it into Paid discovery Not free discovery Paid discovery and we're going to talk about that process and then lastly for agency owners or those that are involved in an agency How can this be utilized to grow your agency? And I can tell you kind of how we did it with ours So You may be wondering who is this guy? Why is he up here talking to me? My name is chris titel I founded seller door back in 2009. We're now a 20-plus person agency And through that we've also created a product. We just acquired a marketplace for freelancers We've been doing a bunch in the space and working with a variety of clients everything from Very small startups small educational institutions all the way to some of the largest businesses in the world And I've been very fortunate and able to do that If you want to find me on drupal.org seller door If you want to tweet at me or exit me or whatever they call it now post or Whatever it is tech nerd title on on the twitters. So Design system what is a design system and why does it matter? So First before we get into what is a design system. Let's talk about what a design system is not A design system is not just components Components are part of a design system, but they're not the whole thing And so if you have a component library Congratulations, you're on the path to having a design system, but don't stop there. All right Um And so the next thing that I hear people say is well, I've got a brand guide, right? I've got a logo and colors and all that and that's again a step in the right direction But you're not quite there And then the last thing is complex a design system does not have to be complex and so As you look at design systems As you look at well-formed design systems a lot of the times people look at that say There's no way I could ever build that that thing is huge. It's a lot of time. It's a lot of effort And yes, a design system is a lot of moving parts This is from if you've heard of brad frost He's one of the ones that came up with atomic design Really great guy and his dove into design systems This blog post here is like a master class in design systems complete with figma links that then have all of these diagrams If you are doing design systems check that post out Even if you think you know design systems, you probably don't after this because it's just so much information But what he does here is he lays out the different parts of the design system and how a design system continues to evolve Because you have to have your core design system from your core design system You have to have technology specific implementation Recipes recipes are what he calls components, right all the different base pieces that are now put back together into a recipe Smart components are dependent on where they're at The technology that they're involved and then again, you've got the product the end result But then he's also a very big advocate of that the product actually feeds back into the system. It's not just a one-way system It's an ecosystem. It's a centric Cycle that you have to go through because the design system is a breathing living thing. It can't just become stagnant So And this quote from the blog post I think is is really critical as we start to look at what a design system is He said it's critical for a design system architecture to be only as complex as it needs to be And just add additional layers of complexity when the real need arises for it I think this is awesome because I had an opportunity to work with brad on a design system that was Highly complex many moving parts many technologies and all that and at first it scared me I was like, holy cow. Like there's no way we're going to be able to implement this for You know our our smaller client. That's not You know this massive international conglomerate And it's not true. You can work towards a design system on any project and we'll go into why you want to do that and so Let's start talking about what a design system is A design system at its essence is a common agreement of all parties from design to development And on how the brand is going to be presented To the user to The consumer wherever that may be on the technology Um, it's a a group of technical implementations and recipes to speed up development. I know that I kind of worded it just for Clickbait or whatever to say, you know All this stuff before you code actually you're going to do some coding in the design system But you're going to be doing it external to what you're doing as you actually start to implement the website And then one thing that I love to have in a design system is a glossary Of all the terms that are going to be used What's a card? What's a button? What's a pop-up? Some people call them All sorts of different things right widget a widget b And if you if you have a design system that has all of this specific verbiage in it And somebody new comes in they're going to be just completely lost So we like to have a glossary in there as well to help people guide through it It also allows um Companies to be agile in their marketing and their branding and their presentation across a whole wide varying Wide range of mediums and so We've implemented a design system for a company that had internal components had external like Internet components external components and even hardware components All ran off of the same design system because what you're essentially wanting to build with a design system Is a unified way that a consumer knows your brand Right, so if you pick up an iphone for those iphone users or android phone for the android users You instantly know how to use it because apple over the years has had a consistent design system Is a consistent experience that you constantly have and you know how to use it intuitively And it's absolutely amazing if those of you that have kids that have watched this happen You just hand them an ipad and all of a sudden just they start knowing how to use it It's because it's intuitive and then as they go from app to app to app they continue to know how to use them That's because apple kind of reinforces a design system like that Um the other thing it does is it decreases developer onboarding time Because a developer can come in load up the design system and they immediately have all the different pieces that they need to start being productive and because of that it actually It decreases developer onboarding time and it increases productivity Because now you're not having to go back and fix the same thing across 50 different things if all of a sudden you say I want my buttons to have a 40 pixel rounded edge instead of a 35 pixel rounded edge because that's something that Somebody somewhere had done some research on you implement it in one place and now all your buttons are changed Right that tone of red is too sharp. Let's let's uh bring it down off you go Before design systems, I had a client that had branding change the colors on us Literally every week and so I had to write a sass function That I called it rainbowify and it would just like you input thing and it would just Like spit out all these colors and then feed them into the design system or into the CSS because I was tired of writing the same thing over and over and over again This eliminates that because you have one place that everything is defined Come on back to me. Sorry. I think the power is off down here. So um, so if we look at I've lost my place here Okay If you want to see like a massive design system at play go check out ibm's carbon It is insane. It is not only defining buttons and typography and iconography And all the different pieces and components It's talking about where to use them how to use them light mode dark mode like it is insane But it's a great reference if you want to start looking at what a fully formed mature design system looks like And so the design system parts I've alluded to some of these But some of the design system parts are going to be your brand And logo guidelines right so colors how to use them where to use them. What's the spacing around the brand all that fun stuff It's going to include at the base level Your typography and iconography right a lot of the times iconography is overlooked But it's a critical part of what is the cancel button look like right? What does the x look like? What does a check mark look like? And again because we're going for consistency in the brand and consistency and experience for the for the customer It's important to go all the way down to these base levels. Then you start bringing them together into common Elements that are defined and allow them to be arranged and rearranged And you can just kind of mix and match and create these what brad calls recipes. I call components And then you normally have a guide of all the components in the system A centralized spot where everything that's going to be shown on the web is in and able to be looked at reviewed Qaid tested completely outside of the website And then last of all there's going to be some rules where can you where can't you Do this don't do that You know if you look at carbon, it's a great example One of the things is on dark mode never put a a modal on dark mode That's darker than the background because you get you get a weird contrast, right? And so there's little rules like that that if you put it into your design system you start to understand And it takes some time, but then over time That consumer experience just gets better and better and better and it's more mature It's more consistent and to them it's it's easier to use So if we want to break down a design system I've got two suns Seven and nine and so they love Legos, right? This is their jam right now, but if you think about it lego is actually a really good design system You've got the tubes and the studs Super basic, right? This is just a block. It's a big square block and we're going to define what this block looks like We're going to define what the color is we're going to define Across all of them. They're going to have the same studs They're going to have the same tubes because they all have to click together, right? And we're not going to change the size of tubes and studs because then the whole thing would fall apart And if all of a sudden we had one piece out here that had a different size stud or a different size tube They would never come back together, right? And so from that basic piece you can create Very complex things And so one of the things we have to look at as we start talking about design systems Is a lot of folks get scared of I don't want to have a cookie cutter site I don't want to have a cookie cutter experience. I want the freedom right for the artistic people in the room You want to you want to be this wild stallion in the field running around? You don't want to be in the corral in a pen cooped up You want to go live free, right? Well a design system lets you live free with some guidelines It lets you live free and you can create and do whatever you want But you know using common elements and tools and from it you get a lot of consistency and so It is a time commitment that I'm not saying it's not But then rather than focusing on the howl a design system focuses more on the what And this allows the design system to be implemented across a lot of technologies So if you're if you're looking at a product or a client or a customer that has websites apps in-store displays Hardware whatever it may be if there's a UI if there's something that a customer is looking at That design system should be able to apply to it and your goal is to be able to unify all the pieces together And because of this like I've been talking about consumer brands need that consistency I've I've experienced this before when I've used certain brands where you you download the mobile app and you're like that Wasn't built by them. I can tell why because the design is not Coherent with what I saw on the website, right and you're trying to get this like It's disjoining in your head of like I'm on the app and now I go back to the web And they're two different experiences and the buttons are different and like where's the menu? Is it a hamburger up here? Is it a button down there? And because of that inconsistency A lot of the times you it ends up in in customer fall-off They'll they'll leave because they just don't like it and for whatever reason sometimes they can't put their finger on it They'll leave because they don't like The inconsistency of your design So it is it is a time commitment And but on the opposite side What it does do is it gives developers and designers Equal say I'm going to talk about that more here in a minute, but but let me Reaffirm that designers developers are equal footing in a design system And because they're equal footing they have all had some voice in the process They all have buy-in now and and those of you that run teams and have managed before you know that If you can get the team to to participate in what's going on rather than just follow commands They have buy-in they're now invested in it because they've personally made a decision And now they're going to be more willing to to work within it and work with it And then last but not least shockingly brands change right logos change colors change fonts whatever it may be Now as you start seeing those pivots even if they're small pivots They're no big deal. I'm going to change a variable here for that color It's updated across the whole design system. We test it. We qa it We make sure it's good to go and off it goes another good point here that I didn't put on here Is that with design systems accessibility becomes so much more attainable? Because all of a sudden if you know that that button is going to have this alt text behind it Or that image is always going to be defined in this way or the aria labels are in a certain Certain way on this component every time that component is used. You know, it's going to be consistent You know, you're going to have it right it's not up to each page or each developer to remember Oh, I need to put this back there So as things change you can you can roll with the punches you can roll with the changes and actually You know work with your clients and they're they're freaking out because they've got all these changes And marketing came down with all this and you're like, no, it's fine. I've updated it Go look at the website and it's right there. It almost feels like magic at times So, um Let's get into who's involved. So Surprise surprise in a design system. We're going to need designers. Uh, any designers in the room? All right, thanks for coming. Um, so designers we need you we want you Um developers nerds where you at? nerds, all right Good job. Um, what nerd doesn't want to be in control, right? So you get you get to say in the design system Uh stakeholders, um management c-sweets Muffy mucks, all right You guys have a role in the design system as well because you need to be able to Um get involved and know what the different pieces are going to be Uh marketing folks any marketing in here? Nope, all right But the marketing folks are just as important And we'll get into that here because they're actually the ones who are held accountable for what the design system does Uh, and then last but not least p.m.'s project management Uh cat herders, we cannot work without you. So thank you very much You're expected to guide the whole process and get us from point a to point b So it's critical that you're involved in that design system process as well So first off the designers One of the things I'm sorry for those designers. I have to say this You're not better than anybody else in the design system You are part of the team. You're part of the design system, but you're not the god of the design system. Okay Let's take a moment and just Process that let's understand that and move on. Okay. So, um, you have an equal footing as everybody else Sometimes you're the origin of it, right? It's it's your brainchild It's your artistic flow and that's great and sometimes marketing is going to come to you and be like I want a cat that's going to like jump across the page and like grab a button Can you do it and you have to figure out how do I make this actually look right? Right? So So sometimes you're going to be coming up with the cat grabbing the button and sometimes you're going to be asked to implement a cat grabbing a button But you're also responsible for considering both the ui the interface. What are they clicking on? What does it look like but also the ux and this is critically important the experience What does it look like when I click that button you start how you have to start asking those questions And and if you're not asking them others may be But it's critical that you're involved in that process to make sure you're you're understanding when I click this button Does it zoom out? Does it fade out? What does it do? Right? And then last but not least, please please please please please avoid the unicorns. All right Our job is not to be creating just because we can like lego has A million different pieces right and they're all sorts of different shapes and colors and you've got cups and microphones and if you ever Build with lego's sometimes you like take a cup and a microphone you stick them together and you have a lightsaber And it's like how do they do that? Right? Let's stop doing unicorns, right? Like we don't want to have A thousand components. We don't want to have a hundred thousand pieces We want to have something that's reusable and constantly that we can go back to so developers You're the ones who bring the design system to life Again, let's knock you off your pedestal. You're not the king in the room. You're a player Okay, but as a developer It's your job to ensure that the design system is built leveraging reusable code So you're in there making sure that the variables are set where they're set. We're not hard coding colors We're not hard coding fonts. We're not doing the things that will make this thing unable to be used I recommend using storybook. I love storybook But there's a lot of frameworks out there that can bring all of these components and pieces together so that they can be tested in One spot. The great thing about storybook is it actually works across languages as well So you can have web components. You can have react components You can do a whole bunch of different stuff, right? And because of that you can have again one One place to rule them all one place that has all of the technology In it and you can build 80 percent of the website without ever touching Drupal without ever touching the actual Implementation to the web you can build most of the website. So then when it comes time to build You're good, right? You work hand in hand with the designers again. This is one of those things where we're going to have to come to agreements Developers designers. We can live together. We can work together and shockingly design systems allow that to occur But you work together to ensure no unicorns again No unicorns if you get anything from this section, it's no Unicorns all right so and because the designers sometimes you Get a moment of artistic Inspiration and you want to do something a lot of the times our developers are there to say hey That's a unicorn. Can we just switch it to this or like take this piece and move it there and the designers like oh Yeah, great, right? That's the type of feedback and back and forth that designers and developers need to have Some of the developers that we've experienced Aren't comfortable having that voice in the room, right? They're not comfortable speaking up, especially in a large group of people a lot of the times We like to talk to computers because they don't talk back to us Well, most of the time they don't talk back to us But there's a reason why developers like computers is because it just does what we say and and we can you know Just just be by ourselves and so in a team scenario sometimes the developer doesn't want to speak up in that design system Conversation so know that you have a place know that you have a voice and you can speak up and your input is valuable All right, so developers let's get out of our shells. Let's talk to those designers Yes, you know, they're creative and artistic and that is not what we are but we can all work together, right? Let's talk about marketing. So marketing Is in this discussion because marketing has to define The data-backed requests so marketing's the one that came and said hey, we pulled our users They love cats We need a cat to grab that button, right because it's going to increase ROI and we're going to you know Make another million dollars because of the cat grabbing a button And so they're the ones that also ensure that there's methods in place to track what that's doing So if all of a sudden you change a button What impact does that have right? Some of the the bigger companies like amazon and stuff can track if we change the size of a button Or the placement of where that buy now link is It can increase or decrease purchasing by five ten percent when you're at scale like that That's a lot of money, right? So there's a lot of research that goes on to that But marketers you're in charge of making sure that Um, you have the ability to measure it and you're also constantly looking towards the future, right designers developers We're living in the now we have to build this thing marketers are out there looking at what's the next thing Maybe it's not a cat grabbing a button. Maybe it's dogs because dogs are you know 2025 and we need to get into dogs So let's start looking at that And then last but not least as a marketer speak up and you're not speaking up on your behalf You're speaking on the behalf of the customer because that's who you know Project management again, thank you for who you are because Stuff does not get done without you. I always say for agency owners. You want the best Productivity boost you want the biggest gain for your agency higher first pm like my first pm Revolutionized our agency because I wasn't the one having to manage projects. I suck at managing projects. I'm not that type of person So um project management You need to ensure that everyone is in the process that they're attending the meetings that they're there Right, but you also need to be listening to the different people in places and say who's not talking Let's pull them into the conversation. Let's get their their ideas Maybe it's that shy developer that doesn't want to talk in a group setting as a pm You have the relationship but you can go talk to them personally and bring their their feedback back Um, you're also there because you document you live and breathe Documentation right and so because of that you're there scribing everything and making sure it's all written down One of the things that we like to do is we are and we're starting to implement this more and more Is we're not just documenting the decision But we're also documenting Why did we make that decision because if something underlying their changes you can go back to the documentation and understand They're like, why is this button blue? Why did we make that blue and rather than being like I don't know or like having to go back into emails or whatever in the Documentation in the design system. It's like this is blue because everyone likes blue and blue is known to be clicked on 10 Percent more right. That's why we we want to be able to document those things So again, y'all are cat herders. You're just pushing us all towards the the milestones making sure things are done And you're coordinating and communicating Even when folks won't do it on their own again, you're the voice You're the collaboration. You are what brings it all together. You're what makes it happen And then last but not least stakeholders So stakeholders Often don't get involved in the design system process, right? I like to involve the stakeholders. Why because Nine times out of 10 you get the whole thing done You'll launch it and the ceo comes in and is like I don't like that button Can we change that button and you're like man if only you were involved in the discussion on the button five months ago We wouldn't have to go back and change this thing now, right? So stakeholders You you need to make sure you have an active role In the process the other thing that you can do as a stakeholder is give an empowerment To your team members to let them know what they're doing is important What they're doing is is necessary and let them know that they've got control If they're constantly thinking like I don't know if I can do this or I don't know if we should try that That cat grabbing a button is kind of a weird thing If the ceo comes in is like, you know what you guys have the research to back it. I trust you Let's do this the cat's grabbing the button. Great. Let's go for it, right? You also hold them accountable. You're paying their checks So you need to make sure that you're involved in the process so you can hold them accountable to what they're doing But then oftentimes the the stakeholders are not the technical voices in the room. They're not the artists They're not the developers. They're they are focused on the business and they're working to make those Those those business goals But because of that They don't have to know the underlying technology and if your stakeholder can get in it's a completely non-technical user and start clicking around and Understanding what your design system does Congrats. You have a successful design system So Next let's talk about our favorite thing in the world documentation, so This is really hard for me to talk about and Honest on my team here. She knows this about me. I don't document I can't say it right now, but I don't document a lot of stuff, right? And so but I have learned over time Slowly that documentation Matters it matters because you have to have a reference to come back to you have to be able to look at What's there? Why is it there? And at times if there's any confusion the documentation is your guide, right? And so documentation matters The one thing we have to realize though is that docs aren't written in stone They can change right they have to change So let's not think that once we write a doc we're done and we'll never go back to it. That's wrong The documentation should constantly be living so documentation should be clear It should be concise And it should be centralized. That's a new one, right? So we'll talk about that, but it should be clear It should be concise. It should be centralized You shouldn't need a phd in computer science to read the documentation of the project if you do the documentation is written for the wrong person You need to make it concise. We don't need war and peace on our design system We don't need to like scroll to page 1453 in order to find that reason why we made the 40 pixel button corner That's not necessary, right? So let's make it concise. Let's do it And then it's centralized You need to have it in a place where people can find it so clear documentation looks like A document that's written for all parties, right? And so we like to keep documents in a place that is editable by everybody that's accessible by everybody And again going back to the empowerment Everyone's empowered to update the docs if you see something wrong change it Don't just say that doc sucks. I'm not going to do this, right? Go in change it make a difference And so write the document so that everybody understands And we have an onboarding doc for our our company and in it is a glossary Here's all the terms of like cms all the way down to some of the more basic things because if you hire somebody in That's a project manager. That's awesome at project management, but they've never worked in Drupal They don't know what an entity is. They don't know what a taxonomy term is, right? And you don't want them to feel Dumb having to ask this basic question, right? And so if you give them that glossary they can they can ease some of that pain of having to onboard into a highly technical team Document again, not just the what but the why why did you make that decision? What led you to that point? And that allows you to have kind of a north star to continue to go back to Um, and then like I said empower your team to make those edits If you see something say something right that for those in the u.s You know that term right but the idea here is if you see it an error go change it if And this happens a lot of the times with onboarding documents of like here's how to set up your local dev environment, right? Everyone's favorite thing to do and all of a sudden Mac releases a new update or docker releases a new update and it completely borks everything and you have to go back And redo it make sure you update your documentation because if you don't the next person's going to come along and spend two days Struggling to get their local environment spun up because the person the last person to do it Successfully didn't document the changes Concise you don't want to have to have a tldr for your docs, right? Like you don't want to have this thing so long that people just try to skip to the bottom and get past it So don't make it verbose. Don't make it hard to read. Otherwise people won't right and if the documentation is not used It's worthless And so a concise document going back to clear It's understandable by everybody if you feel like it's too long Chances are you don't you're not writing it clear and you need to go back and understand why And then the other thing is if you have a table of contents It really helps to find things, right? So have that table of contents have a way to find things in the documents fast One of the things that one of our team members loves to do is actually use the book module for those of you from like old school Drupal days If you use the book module, it's great for writing docs that live Inside the site so then a client whenever they're looking at their site saying what is this component They can actually click on a button and go in the site They don't have to leave where they're at and they can see what is the component? What does it do? Why is it used? Where is it used? What are the rules for where it's used, right? So and along those lines centralized documentation I hate hate hate when I have to join a project and they're like, oh, yeah the docs are over in confluence great Where's all the tickets? They're in a sauna Why why are we using all these systems and now you're having to manage logins? You're having to make sure that every team member is on there. Oh, just go look at the docs. I don't have access to them Why don't you have access to them, right? So Don't make your team hunt for those documents We like to put them all in the same place So if you're using JIRA use confluence, they work well together if you're using we like to use click up That's our tool of choice our docs live and click up next to the tickets that are actually in click up Why because it's really easy for a developer to go. I'm asked to build this component I'm asked to change this thing. What is that thing? Why is it there? What does it look like all those different things hop to the documents find out where it's at? so Now that we've gone through all of that, let's bring it all together And please please please can we start Invoicing for discovery raise the hands who invoices for discovery right now Awesome Keep doing it for those of you that didn't raise your hands Do it. They're not going to get mad at you. Okay. So can I really invoice for it? Yes We have found that the most crucial state the most crucial part of a project No matter the size the scope whether it's one dollar or a million dollars If discovery is not done right the whole thing's going to fall apart And if you do discovery right your relationship with the client is solidified right at the beginning and you're setting yourself up for success So what does proper discovery? Um, you know paid discovery look like it's scoped It's budgeted and it's a deliverable Um, you want to make sure that everyone knows what they're doing What will and won't happen as part of discovery right because we all have those questions of like is this in scope? Is it out of scope make sure that you have a clear scope? budget it Because it makes it valuable not only for you as an agency right because you're you're getting money for work That's being done. We all like to get paid for stuff that we do But also it makes it valuable to your client because if they're paying for it now They have to get invested into it right if it's a freebie that you're you're tacking on the side Maybe i'm not going to reply to that email right away or like why should I go to that meeting? If i'm paying for it i'm going to be at every meeting i'm going to make sure that i'm on every email Right, so it holds them as accountable as it holds you And then deliverable you want to have something at the end of it So what is a scoped? Discovery look like While you don't know what you're going to build yet Scoping that it's kind of hard But what you want to do is scope the discovery just like you would scope Anything else in your projects and make sure that there's clear outcomes We don't know what we're going to build but we are going to build a design system We're going to build some documentation We're going to understand what that looks like and here's how much of that we're going to do Maybe a lot of ours say we're going to have x number of components So we're going to as part of this discovery process We're going to build 30 components and if all of a sudden they come to you and say hey I really need that cat grabbing a button. You say that's component number 31. It's a change order Let's make sure that happens and off you go. It makes it very consistent, right? It puts an expectation on the effort And it helps kind of size the project So if it's a small design system if it's a small discovery project It's likely going to be a small site if it's a big discovery like we've had close to six figure discovery projects because It's going to be a big project if you're spending that much upfront Just to make sure you know what you're building You know it's going to be a big project and you want to make sure that you have that much effort up front And you can do it either by value value or deliverable by the hour Doesn't really matter I one of my favorite things to say is I hate fixed bids because it ends with me hating you or you hating me I'm doing free work or you're paying for something that I'm not doing it puts us at odds, right? So rather I like to align myself with my clients and say we're just going to do this time in materials But we're going to have clear deliverables and here's what that looks like, right? When you get into discovery That kind of flexes a little bit because you may have like a standard discovery process that you go through Make sure you value that you took time to put that process together. That is your secret sauce Don't just give that away. All right, so sometimes with discovery It's like a base plus or something like that you can get a little more creative with it But please don't do fixed Budgeted You can't pay the bills with experience For those of you that are newer to development are newer to agencies and are trying to build up a small agency One of the things you want to do is just grab that experience if I only have that logo on my bar I can you know get the next sale and You know, I'm going to go out and I'm going to do everything for free because I just want them to like me Newsflash, they'll pay you for it too. They're just taking advantage of your free free time and generosity If you give them that opportunity most businesses will take it. So Like I said having paid discovery Shows that you're taking it seriously the client also surprisingly starts taking it seriously if they're starting to Be asked to pay for it You'll also end up with a better Discovery because you're actually putting the time and effort into it if you're not getting paid for it You're going to rush through it as fast as you can, right? So this last thing is something that's more unique to us We like to have our our discovery process end with a deliverable. It's going to have an audit It's going to have a slideshow. It's going to have something tangible that the client can leave with Part of that is if they're going to pay you for it They should have something to show for that payment, right? It's not just a bunch of documents in your own ticketing system that they don't own they don't use right So make it a deliverable make it something that they can own Um and sometimes Shockingly during the discovery process you realize I don't like this client. I don't want to work with them, right? On the flip side They might say the same thing about you, right? But if you say hey at the end of the discovery process here is a deliverable Here is a roadmap an architecture plan for how you're going to build your site Go find someone else and you can walk away. They don't feel like they just wasted all that money They've got a tangible deliverable architecture document that they can now take to another agency and we've done this We've given it to clients and said, you know Peace be with you, but we're not going to be here with it And on the flip side, we've been given discoverable documents Our deliverable discovery and we're like awesome We're only going to change this this and this and it took what would have been a massive, you know Two three month long discovery process was scoped down to like two weeks because it's basically like hey Let's review what the previous agency did. Let's make sure we're in line with it We'll change anything we need to off we go So why does this lead to agency growth? It's probably why most of you agency folks are here This is like ground breaking I know Some of you don't know this and I'm sorry that I have to be the one to teach you If you have happy clients your agency grows It's how it works, right? So as an agency Our job is to make sure that our clients are happy If our clients are happy they spend more money. We have more consistent consensus And we are agile We're not only agile ourselves as the as the development team. We have agile clients. They like that so Increased speed Taking the time to upfront to document and design and come to that Make sure is makes sure that you have a clear path to finish without the dreaded refactor, right as a developer You're like, yeah, I can do that, but I'll have to refactor everything. Nobody likes to hear that, right? So let's get it all done at the beginning so that we're not refactoring it constantly A design system once it's created and the components are in place The implementation in the cms is really more building the lego than actually designing the studs and tubes, right? We're just putting this thing together, right? If you ask me to make my own death star Lego kit, it's going to take me months But if you give me a booklet and some pieces I can put that together relatively quickly, right? So and again proper documentation and design leads to clearer tickets less confusion Everybody knows what they're doing which means the clients are happy Now if the clients are happy You have more consensus. You're on the same team And with that consensus the inevitable change Comes up and the clients are able to say Yes, that's change because in our document we clearly stated that rounded corners are 40 pixels You want to change them to 60 pixels? That's a change order. It's a small one, but it's a change order, right? It allows you to not have that ambiguous like did we talk about this? Didn't we like who agreed on this? Where did it come from? All of us have been there if you're if you have those conversations It doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong, but this helps eliminate a lot of those Arguments about what's in scope what's out of scope because the scope was created as part of the project And then last we're going to have alignment on the project and it creates because of that alignment Because of that alignment we're going to have more success in the long run And so That success looks like As an agile agency You are now giving your Client the ability to make their own decisions, right? I'm giving you all the lego pieces and now i'm saying have at it You know you want a microsite go make a microsite. You want another page on your website? Don't have to talk to me, right? They love that because inevitably in their history at some point They've had a website where every single word every single image has to go to a developer It has to get a ticket I have to wait two weeks to see that thing on the page and then as a marketer I am now waiting two weeks to then have to start tracking it for another month To see if the customer even liked that thing, right? But if you're able to make those changes quick you you agree on them You roll it out. They can start seeing it really quick or hey, we've got a new product Cool You've got all the pieces to put the product page together. We don't have to get involved in that And it makes them more agile in their business So pivots become less impactful And overall faster releases just make that agile marketing agile business Something that you can start getting them into it will change the way that they work it will deliver results Every time and because of that they go back to A happy client right they're making more money They're making more money because of the thing that you did and they'll keep coming back to you So let's wrap it all up and put it all together Design systems while intimidating at first actually save work in the long run So do them take the time invest in a design system Make sure that everyone on your team is involved that they're empowered that they're given the ability to have say in a seat at the table Make sure that you're documenting everything For folks like me that don't do that documentation so that I can come back to and be like Why do we make that decision or what did we talk about in the last meeting? I now have a place that I know I can go to Reliably and have all that information Last for those of you that aren't doing paid discovery. I hope that you can see that glimmer of Actuality that you can go start charging for discovery and for those of you that are charging for discovery Keep going for it. We need to set that precedent in the market that this is something that is not free This is not something that's given away because Understandably it's the most critical part of the document or a critical part of the process And then last if we do this all right our agencies are going to start to grow We're going to start seeing those clients One of the things that I pride ourselves on as an agency is we've been around for 14 years We've never marketed once we've never ran an ad we've never done a billboard We've never done any of that why because we have happy clients happy clients lead to more clients Because they're going to go talk to someone else or someone's going to say hey, how do you build that website? That looks awesome Oh, they built it for us cool Now I want to go hire them or you make that person look like a rock star in their organization What ends up happening especially in today's day and age? They're going to get laid off They're going to move they're going to go somewhere else and they're going to go I need to look like a rock star again at this new place I'm going to go bring the old people in because that's the team that made me look good, right? so With all that thank you for coming. Thank you for staying this late at the conference If you have any questions, I can take them now. I think we have a minute or two if there's one or two Also, there's in the app. You can do session reviews. So please go on there Let me know if you like my cat grabbing a button idea if I should change that Or if there's anything else that you would like to get feedback on Then most of all go get involved with the contribution days. That's coming up tomorrow If you are new to the process or you don't think you have a place in contribution You do so come to it and find out how And so with that, I think I can take one or two questions. Do I have time? Yeah. All right. Are there any questions? Yep First question Is on the website That's a great question In two parts So the the first question was Where do you draw those lines? That's scope, right? And that's purely just You need you need to look at the process look at the client look at what they want out of this One of the best things that I love asking clients is rather than like here's what I'm going to do for you It's like, what do you want me to do? Where do you want to go? My favorite question is where do you want to be in two years? If I ask you where you want to be in two years I now know where your milepost is where your You know line of success is and then I'll take you there, right? So from there I can work back draw a scope and then if all of a sudden like hey, we totally left out social media Cards we need to have you know our x twitter changes how they do their Links now where they don't actually show the link title anymore. We need to do something We have scope around that we can change it up And then implementation We've done this at larger organizations where we start to implement a design and then all of a sudden other teams are like Ooh, that's fun. I want in on that, right? And so all of a sudden you can start having multiple organizations We've worked with some some very large companies that have actually implemented it across multiple multiple teams and all of a sudden With more people comes more complexity. So now you have to have a process for How does the design system change because if I change that button and I have a cat run out of the side of the Scream and grab it all of a sudden every app every website every You know hardware piece everything's going to have cats running around it and maybe they don't want that So maybe we need to figure out a way to contain the cat just to the web and let everyone else do their thing Right? So it it can get used and you'll start to see other people start to use it as well Any last questions? Totally fine. If not All right, I appreciate it for all you guys being here