Drawar

Although I don't work in the design industry anymore I think the biggest problem is justifying the right price to be paid for work. Too many $299 shops floating around now to even think that you can make it big doing design on your own without developing a decent sized client base.

I hate when clients try to micromanage the design phase of a project, like they have any idea of the thought that goes into design. In other words, they don't trust the designer to do a good job.

Internet Explorer?

If I was working in an actual business where EVERYONE was basically working on web based things anymore, I'd have to say the same thing with print work... Art Directors!

I hate people coming up behind me and pulling stuff like "I don't like that, make it purple" and having ZERO ability to reply with "the client SPECIFICALLY stated no purple."

I would have to agree with JPhill. I have a few projects out right now where the client is being very unreasonable to the point I'm ready to walk away from the project. It has reached the point to where the project is not even portfolio worthy. Not because I didn't do my best to create and professional site and brand, but because their idea of what's "looks cool" is everything you just don't do on in design!

What I have learned is this. Those who hire us to build a web presence for them or design their brand, have very little education on the process and what it takes to create such works (and that's ok, that's why we get hired). And the examples that are out there for them to view are 9 times out of 10, complete, out of date garbage. So from the jump they are crippled and have a skewed view as to what makes a site design work or what makes a brand popular.

And when you/I try to educate them on best practices and help them navigate the mine filed of web pitfalls, it goes through one ear and out the other.

I have clients who trust what I say and listen and learn and offer good suggestions. And I also have clients who are unbearable to work with.

Someone should open up a clique here dedicated to project management and bitching!

When you've just finished a great design, perfectly balanced and looking superb, and somone says "oh, can we squeeze a 160 x 600 skyscraper in just here?"

1. Realising I can't do it all myself.
   Learning to take time and get a good base of contractors I can call in to do larger projects or help when times need it has been a hard lesson for me. As a developer and designer I was used to 'doing it all myself'. I have learnt over time that this isn't necessarily the best thing. Whilst I always project manage and code manage to ensure a certain level as it's having my company name after all on it, I have had to learn to let some of it be done not be myself. It was hard and took years of my husband pushing me to do less.
2. Setting revisions.
   One of the big lessons I learnt luckily quite early on was to be careful to set revision numbers for designs in contracts. I learnt the hard way - I often seem to have learnt the hard way with most of these things.
3. Make it look good just for me.
   There are some clients who no matter how much you try and inform them about the web simply refuse to see that anyone would use a browser, computer or platform that is not the one they are using. They cling to this bizarre belief that their set up is the only one that anyone would use. Often this is browser blindness but it can extend into some really odd realms of 'everyone has the same as me' which can include more 'design' features like their love of royal blue and fuscia.
4. X can do it for cheaper y.
   I gave a long time ago competing beyond profitability. Sure I may loose some projects this way, but the bottom line is I can't compete with everyone. Initially it was tempting to come in low on a project just to win, this soon became a fruitless and profit loss situation. Now, I price what is a fair price for my market place and my location along with what works for me. I gave up a long time ago looking at x or y and trying to raise or lower my prices to match.
5. Frankenstein design.
   One of the most annoying things is showing a client a couple or so of designs and having them pick out x, y, a, b and c across them all. I have yet to see a client not create Frankensteinesque designs from this.

Amongst many other things that rank near the top on my list, I have to say browser inconsistencies, namely Internet Explorer, is numbah 1! :P

When clients think it's fair to keep changing the project as it's nearing completion... sure, you can charge them more for extra work, but even then it messes up your scheduling and keeps you stuck on a project that you are ready to be over with!

@Karmatosed:

Realising I can't do it all myself.

From a user standpoint this is the most frustrating experience I had and I wished more designers would either say "no" or get a good group of reliable people they can outsource the work to. On the designs I had done the woman knew me so well she'd do a mockup and it would launch just like her initial mockup...yet she'd miss her deadline by weeks (a couple of times it was a couple of months) because of poor time management.

I sympathize with designers because most don't have the experience I had with her (client approving the initial markup) and not only have to be creative geniuses but I do think that it would be wise when planning out a job to think of the time it takes to do the job and tack on the time (via experience) that expected delays would add to the job. If there aren't any, the designer has a cushion and if he/she wants to turn it in early that just makes both sides happier.

1. When Creative overruns budget and the blame is on tech-build

2. When Project Managers are allowed to own the budget, and the discipline heads have no control over there own sub-budgets

nachtzeit, very good points........been there before.

1. Browser incompatibilities (Internet Explorer, I'm looking at you...) - think of the time we'd save if everything just worked across the board, no changes or tinkering needed. Dealing with code that works in one browser and looks/acts like crap in another is without a doubt one of the quickest ways to frustrate me, because all that time that I'm using up on it could really be better used somewhere else.

2. Clients who try to change their mind about the design after it's already been approved and the site is almost completed - "Oh, actually, I saw this really cool website the other day and I was thinking, can we change this one to look more like it?" And of course, they act completely shocked and scandalized when I tell them that sure, it can be redesigned, but they're going to have to pay extra for it.

3. People who don't take me seriously as a web designer/developer because a) I'm a girl, b) I don't look like a nerd, and c) I'm young. That's usually when I get fed the "well, my co-worker's friend's son can do it for $50, so why are you charging me $2000?" line.

I feel like our customers have an issue with writing content. No matter what the industry, they all feel like they are a great copywriter, don't want to pay for it, but then don't deliver the content or they deliver pretty bad work.

Content is always a problem, in organizations large and small. It always takes longer to create than you think and the first draft is always worse than you think.

The other problem is working with people who aren't very talented. There are a lot of people working in the web design industry who really don't know what they are doing and do not take the time and trouble to educate themselves about best practices.

Concepts like accessibility and usability are alien to a lot of people. Many of them have never talked to a user or watched a usability test.

I find myself constantly doing things other people aren't doing. Usually they're not big things, but little bits here and there. When I run into a problem, be it a browser bug, or some unexpected CSS behavior... I have no one to ask about it, and no reference to go to.

It's very frustrating, but I suppose that's the price I pay for trying to do something different.

It has reached the point to where the project is not even portfolio worthy. Not because I didn't do my best to create and professional site and brand, but because their idea of what's "looks cool" is everything you just don't do on in design!

*shudders*
I just had that experience in spades over the last year. We'd finally gotten to the point where both the web programmers and the designers finally knocked a good chunk of best practices and some design theory into the decision-makers' heads (actually, after talking to consultants, they decided we really did know what we were doing) and the frankensteins they'd been insisting on were slowly giving way to nice portfolio pieces. In fact, I opted not to take a job at an agency because I wanted the change to work on some of the upcoming projects which would really help my meager portfolio.

A few weeks after the agency hired the people they needed, our company went under. Before I had any portfolio pieces. Now I'm left with copy that they fiddled into nonsense and designs that they ... well, let's just say they trusted us on colours but nothing else.

I would agree with what was previously said, specifically:

• Clients trying to micromanage the design phase
• Realizing that I don't have time to do everything myself
• Clients that try to keep pushing in new requirements at the last minute

I haven't worked on all my projects myself, but one time I conceded and allowed the client to pick an designer that he had used in the past instead of one of my designer friends which turned out to be extremely painful because he was a print artist and didn't know jack about the web. I received all assets in compressed-to-shit JPG's and most of the images had inconsistent sizing so I had to pretty much manually redo everything myself anyways (plus I wasn't supposed to be responsible for HTML/CSS either, but you can see where this is going). The lessons we learn...Anyways, I finished the project and told them that I would not be available in the future. After that experience, I stopped contracting on the side and decided to stick with just my day job - no amount of money is worth wasting that much of my free time. ;-)

I think the most annoying problem I still run into is when a grossly unqualified client wants to make bad design changes at the last minute. Not only are these changes difficult in the last hours of the project but they make me feel like I'm working overtime to make the site fail.

The best solution I've come up with is to work hard to get all the design decisions out of the way as early as possible. Next, I resort to firm language expressing my disapproval. And finally, I grin and bear it.