There are many types of creative design workflows that are appropriate for certain use cases. Some circumstances dictate that a more formal controlled process is called for, whilst a looser process may be right for a more relaxed collaborative approach.
In our experience the principle creative design and approval processes can be summarised as follows:
Managed Approval Cycle
A managed flow is best suited to situations where creative feedback and creative approval needs to be controlled and orchestrated by a single person – normally the creative project manager. Imagine you have asked 3 or 4 people for their comments and hopefully approval. A creative project manager you have to review comments and deal with different views and opinions and make the call as to what changes / amends need to be done. This sort of process requires careful co-ordination rather than a free for all.
Agile Approval Cycle
An agile approval flow is best suited to experienced multi-functional teams. As such this a process flow where the creative project manager is happy that all stakeholders (approvers) in the review cycle can make comments, assign tasks, and move things along without necessarily coming back to them – avoiding unnecessary bottlenecks. This collaborative approach works well with remote teams in different locations and time zones.
Ideation Feedback Cycle
Does what says on the tin. Maybe you have an idea or a concept you just want some views on. You are not asking for any formal approval just thoughts, ideas, and constructive feedback. Bringing this feedback together is important to progress initial concepts into more fully fledged creative campaigns that reflect the experiences of a broader group.
These are the 3 common use cases we see with our clients, there are other more complex cases however which are worth outlining…
**Choose**
This is the use case where you have a number of creative designs prepared and you want your client to select the one they prefer, or provide an order of preference. So you could ask the straight question, “Here is design A and here is design B – which one do you prefer?” – the answer is a simple A or B. However, this gets more complicated when you ask more than one person to the answer the question. It gets more interesting when you want some view on order of preferences or ranking. You can ask the question several ways, for example:
- Which 1 or these designs
- Which X of these designs
- Rank (say stars or similar) – not mutually exclusive
- Rank best to worst – mutually exclusive
As previously mentioned the more people involved in the process the more complex it is to collate and disseminate results.
**Visual Impact**
This is a use case where you are formally tracking (as in eye tracking) the impact (attention) the creative design has. What does the customer see, in what order do they view components of the design. This process is used to compare different creative designs to see which creative design has maximum impact.
Are there any other creative approval and feedback workflows you have experienced?