Speculative design? No opinion here

The debate about speculative design rages on amongst the web design community and I will start my saying up front, “I have no formed opinion on this one”. I know the arguments on both sides however.

In an increasingly competitive market place speculative design could be seen as a necessary part of generating business & stimulating interest by creative ideas and concepts. Interest that, at times perhaps would not have been there or without visual stimulation. A business may have realised that their website is not where it needs to be and certainly is not meeting its designated business objectives; but often business owners are not always certain about how to take the next steps towards improvement or even about what exactly is needed.

On the other hand, if creative design services are a valuable commodity, many top designers fiercely argue that giving it away for free is unprofessional and equates to whoring yourself and can only devalue perception of talent and quality. This argument has a lot of merit but is perhaps a little precious and unrealistic in the current climate?

I can see both sides on this one. However, certainly any digital agency should be extremely careful and judicious when considering speculative design. It is very time consuming and high risk. An additional value, other than directly leading to a commission, is that it does increase agency awareness; and there is no stimulus better than liking what you see to prompt investment in a new web/ other digital project.

So here’s a very good article from the peeps at SitePoint weighing up some latest thoughts on the matter: http://tinyurl.com/dldokf