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Web designers have it easy compared to other professions

Platform: Internet | Author: Karl Bunyan, director of web development agency Exponetic | Source: NMA magazine | Published: 07.12.06

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Some years ago, having recently changed to a career in new media, I was sent a humorous email with the title 'If architects had to work like web designers'. This parodied the hard life that web designers have by way of a letter sent to an architect from an imaginary new client.

Were the analogy to be believed, web designers have to deal with incomplete client briefs, whimsical requests and arbitrary decisions influenced by unaccountable third parties. The message was that architects would...

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... never put up with anything like that.

Ironically, I'd just moved from the very profession that was apparently so much easier, but which seemed quite hard work at the time. It also seemed somewhat rich comparing a 2,000-year-old skill with one still in its first decade.

Once I was over the initial questioning of my recent career choice, I thought more about how the analogy stood up. After all, I'd been working in new media for a few months and it seemed pretty good.

For a start, I'd invested eight years of my life in an architectural career yet I was still a fledgling. It's hard to imagine anyone in new media waiting seven years before they could even gain a formal job title.

I'd also waved goodbye to a morass of regulation. What would happen if web designers had to run ideas past not only the client but also a planning officer, a building control officer, possibly a conservation officer and maybe even a party-wall surveyor? God forbid that anyone should need to add new pages to a site that had been Grade II listed.

Then there's liability. Architects often take on the risk of bankruptcy on almost every project, where their entire fee can be wiped out by a miscalculation of a few centimetres. Re-factoring code is much easier than trying to move building foundations.

It didn't take long for me to work out that, compared to the complications of being an architect, the web world seemed fairly easy going.

So, forgetting the legislation and the liabilities, what if web designers did try to work more like architects?

Over a couple of thousand years the role of the architect has evolved from generalist to specialist. In contrast, the agency model is still based on the one-stop shop. One company is usually responsible for deciding what to build and how it looks, as well as delivering the product.

In the UK construction industry there are structural engineers, builders, plumbers, planning consultants, mechanical engineers and even quantity surveyors. Each has their role and large companies have been built around every one. Expertise exists at an organisational not an individual level.

I think we'll see more agencies with specialist expertise in strategy, proposition development, branding, designing, building and testing working together on projects rather than building in-house teams.

Procurement and contractual models will evolve for different project types. Construction projects may be run by an architect, a contracting firm or another professional. In the same way, I think we'll see one specialist firm leading a project and co-ordinating a team of providers, possibly with subcontractors nominated by the client in the same way that architects often are.

If architects really did work like web designers, with no requirement for formal training, no regulation, and trying to mix concrete and lay bricks, then I'm not sure many of us would feel safe indoors. But maybe if web designers start to work more like architects we can raise the quality of our end product and begin to justify the comparison being made.

Karl Bunyan is director of web development agency Exponetic