Educating your clients leads to proper user experiences
Working as a Creative Director for a mobile application development company, I am constantly having to envision user experiences for many projects at a time. One of the biggest challenges about the business isto understand your client's needs, explore their ideas, improve their vision and canalize their focus based on your research and expertise. I have heard of many cases where development companies take the short route to just "please their client" without warning them about the consequences a bad user experience could, and most likely will bring in on the long run. That can be seen all around us and it is very obvious when you download a variety of apps from any app store and within seconds you think "how do I get back to that screen I just saw?".
User interface sketch example
We are constantly looking to innovate, and that is a great thing, but standards are there for a reason. When designing an interactive user interface, one has to contemplate all the scenarios and even when innovating one should consider basing the interface in what is already established. Those user experience standards and documentation have taken years to study and develop for each respective OS and should not be ignored.
It is very important to assume the expert role you were sought for in the first place and educate your client into making the right choices every step of the way. Document your work and plan your presentations with comprehensive material to help prove your points. Your work will be greatly benefited from having a clear information architecture, a focus pattern to drive the project forward and the client's praise when the project is completed. Most importantly a good user experience will play a big part in the success of your delivered product. A successful app, website or software is a great achievement to have under your name and will open up many opportunities in the future.