I have often worked freelance on projects with difficult clients. Frequently we have agreed on my tasks in a project and yet the client often asks for more, expecting this to be part of the deal. While I am often careful about the wording of my contracts – for example, I ensure that my duties are worded in a way that is very specific – I still find it difficult sometimes to draw the line of what is part of the contract and what not. My solution in part has been to generate specification documents with the online wireframe tool that I use. This means that I can send these to the client in PDF form and she can agree to the project specifications.
I have found that having a specification document has helped prevent requests from my client for extra pages of a website, or extra navigation tabs, for example. It is natural that last-minute changes can occur in a project, and yet it is also important for my client to know that this will come at an extra cost. It has also been useful for me at the outset of a project to use my online wireframe tool to present my design in interactive form, so the client knows exactly how I plan to proceed. In these meetings I often get useful feedback and insights in these meetings, which is helpful for my projects. I have found that using specification documents has improved my client relationships and made my services more transparent.
