who (NOT WHY) should have the final say on the layout/design of a website that is developed in-house?

Question

forget the weird cases/companies, but in general, who, in your view, is the person who should be able to put his/her foot down and say "THIS is the layout. THIS is where the marketing message comes, THIS is where the price comes, THIS is where the testimonial comes"?? - the boss man, the template designer, users (split testing or something?)

I have never seen a never-ending series of stupid arguments and suggestions that lead up to a website that is a total disaster. That is what is happening at my work-place.

Technically, who should have the final say? I am very new to corporate world so I'd like to know how it is done.

Edit: when the client is paying, what they want goes in and what they don't want doesn't. Clear. What about when the website is built in-house? the top brass is acting as if the company is democratic and stuff when its actually not. So, going by their acclaimed democratic process, who should make the decision?

My company is product based and we develop our own website.

The question is WHO... not WHY. So please don't even begin to justify your answer or this question will be closed as argumentative or something. If 8 out of 10 replies say a particular person is responsible, there is no need for an argument there. If the replies are equally distributed, i'll take it that there is no ideal person who has the final say in the real world. But for god's sake please don't turn this into an argument! :D

Answer 1

Who's paying for it?

The Client! However its the job of the service provider to shape the clients ideas - However, there is always an odd client who has very firm ideas of what they want, in this case not alot you can do other than produce it.

Edit:

In the case of In-House - It works from the top-down then, the Owner -> MD -> Managers etc etc

However you would like to think that the top level managment would know that a designer is a designer and know how to design.

Edit 2: When I did work in such a place it was the job of the Analyst.

Answer 2

I would say that the final say on how a site should look (in terms of design, screen flow and usability) should come from the client.

However designers and developers should try to frame their ideas from a business sense. Remember that most (ok some) designers have spent a large amount of time at university studying elements of graphical design and know what colours work together and what gets people’s attention. Good developers will have some understanding on usability and we all know that usability is important. Whilst the customer should always have the last say we (as service providers) should always be willing to provide input (if warranted).

Answer 3

It doesn't matter so much who it is that makes the decision, as long as there is someone.

What you are facing seems to be the situation where there is noone responsible for these decisions, so everyone is making decisions back and forth, and noone has the final say.

It's natural that the client should have the final say, however it's common that the client doesn't really know what they want or how to describe what they want. In that case someone else has to make the decisions on what should be presented to the client for approval.

Even if there is a democratic process during the development (which is usually a good way to progress), a company is not a democracy. In the end someone has to take the fruits of the process and decide what's good for the final product and what's not.

Answer 4

most programmers find it convenient to just do what their client or employer say. that's where code monkey term comes from I guess.

I could never work like that but I don't expect client to automatically trust me as well. Trust is something that has to be earned by showing confidence, diligence and good ethics. if client doesn't trust his supplier, relationship is doomed. that's why code monkeys can never deliver good results.

Answer 5

The end-user. If its client, then he should decide. Else if its internal website, then the actual user. Also see the book by Joel about UI. I don't remember the name though.

Answer 6

Ultimately it would be the business owner or the person elected to represent the business owners.

However, they would normally expect to be able to delegate the responsibility for such decisions to a single person further down the hierarchy. This person should have the authority to coordinate the required people and departments and make a decision. In an ideal world this person has the humility to realise that they aren't a web or UI designer and will allow the experts to advise them.

It sounds like the decision making hasn't been delegated to an individual but to a number of people (or the individual who has the authority isn't able or willing to use it). These seems to be relatively common.

Answer 7

Everyone has a client - even in-house.

The 'person' who gets the final say are the ones who will be eventually using it.