Comments on: Photoshop mockups vs. Client Expectations

By: Chary

Chary — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 12:13:47 +0000

I agree with u,
Most of the clients expects the same design which shown as Mockup, they will argue if we miss little extra space also, to overcome this problem it’s better to design mockups in such a way that how they will appear after coding. My concern is just be aware of design elements must be added in consideration of how they will appear in HTML and avoid unwanted elements, which are not necessary for that.

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By: TJ

TJ — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 17:18:40 +0000

Harmony: I totally understand where your coming from. I agree with you. Sometimes photoshop mockups are just annoying road blocks. And when it comes to the design looking the same when html’ized’, I usually don’t have a problem this this, unless I’m getting a design from a designer who doesn’t do html, therefore creates things without thinking about how the layout will work.

Danny: Thanks for your comments, I really appreciate hearing what others have to say about this topic, and thanks for including your experiences too. I think demanding a full working prototype is absolutley rediculous unless that client really wants to get in deep with hours and time..

By: Danny Foo

Danny Foo — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 02:17:04 +0000

Over here in Malaysia it’s a necessity to produce a mockup because all the clients just need to look at something. The worst of the lot are the ones that demand a full working prototype rather a 2-3 page one. In other words, we’re creating a BETA but the idea isn’t finalized.

The other thing is that we’re not so lucky to charge clients by the hour here so half the time it’s done with a quoted ballpark figure based on an hourly fee.

But I definetely understand what you’re getting at in this entry. :)

By: Harmony

Harmony — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 23:25:46 +0000

Like Andy I’ve always stuck with Photoshop for design mockups and have never had a problem with clients seeing differences between the mockup and the html prototype. I think this mainly has to do with just spending extra time in the mockup phase thinking in ‘html mode’ so that you know the working version will be very similar, if not exactly similar, to the static design.

Also with CSS now we can pretty much place things anywhere we want on the page and still have it standards-compliant and cross-browser compatible, so matching the mockup to the prototype is even less of a challenge than it used to be.

Regarding other mockup options, the only thing I’ve seen which was vaguely useful was a Java app which let you drag and drop form and page elements but it was mainly for usability and functionality purposes, not design, so not very useful in the mockup stage but particularly useful for nutting out how screens are going to work with clients which is usually my biggest challenge.

I think at the end of the day, because most mockups have to be hand-crafted to suit the individual needs of each client, we’re stuck with Photoshop mockups. Building a small working prototype for the client would be ideal, but considering the time involved in that I can’t see it happening as part of the quote, and you’d also be opening a whole can of worms there if you were allowing changes on a working prototype the way re-designs were allowed on a mockup.

By: Andy

Andy — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 19:55:03 +0000

At the company I work at now, we do Photoshop and Fireworks mockups to present to clients.

Usually, we don’t get any comments like “how come it looks different from the screenshots you present to us?” When I put together the design mockup in Photoshop, I try to make it to where I will be able to code it into a XHTML/CSS layout afterwards. If I can’t do something into XHTML/CSS, then I won’t do it or show it in the mockup.

There are always alternatives you can do and still present almost the same idea to the client.

By: tj

tj — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 17:16:14 +0000

I like the way you think. I think with just some group discussions and a little extra communication, I think we can eliminate the ‘finished product’ mockup we are all so used to.

By: Kuswanto

Kuswanto — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 06:17:50 +0000

I don’t get much web design project.
But most of my web design project started creating mockups how the “face” of the website gonna look like. My client mostly aware of xHTML and css, they are devs too.

So if i stumblo on broswer bugs (mostly IE) when i translate the mockup to xHTML and CSS, they can understand why the differences beetween these browser arise.

Actually this is not how we create the mockup, but how we communicate our ideas to clients, and vice versa. Understanding what the client needs will be speeding up the work process, and get pay fast too :)

cheers,