The life of a football manager is a demanding and high pressured one. Your every move is questioned and your decisions scrutinised. Not only do you have to ensure that your team produces winning performances but you also have a team to keep happy and meet the expectations of demanding fans.

After reading the above you may think that there are no similarities between designing websites and managing a football team. However, bear with me and hopefully by the end of this post I’ll have convinced you.

Formation

A manager spends a large chunk of his time looking at the best way to set out his team, where the players will be positioned when they have the ball, when they don’t have the ball and during set pieces. He will look at the space between the midfield and the front line; look how to close as many gaps as possible and in what position to play his key players. The formation he ultimately decides on will depend on the players as his disposal.

A web designer will spend a lot of time during the design process determining how best to layout the elements of a website. Which elements work best in what position, how much space to leave between elements, if certain spaces need filling or if more whitespace will work better. The layout that the designer ultimately decides on will depend heavily on the content at his disposal.

So whilst a football manager will spend time deciding whether to play a 4-4-2 or a more defensive 4-1-3-1-1, a designer will spend his time deciding whether to go with a 1 column layout, a 2 column or maybe even a more structured 3 column layout.

Reaction

How will players act in certain situations? If the team is suddenly two nil down will they be more offensive in their approach, will the wingers push harder to get to the byline and put some quality crosses into the box? If the opposing team substitutes their nippy agile winger for their 6ft 5 striker, will the manager decide to counteract this by bringing on their equally big central defender? A manager will have to decide how their team and players should react to certain situations.

A web designer will have to decide how the elements of his web page will react to certain user actions. What happens when a user hovers their mouse over a link, what happens if a user tries to visit a broken link, what happens if a user enters invalid information in a web form? These are all different situations that a designer will have to anticipate, and decide how these different elements will react.

Pleasing the Fans

Any football manager will tell you that the best way to please the team’s fans is to win games, win trophies and by playing attractive fluid football. A manager who doesn’t listen to the fans won’t last long at the club, he doesn’t necessarily have to act on every piece of advice or criticism he may receive, but he certainly has to listen to it and acknowledge it. If he doesn’t act on it, he needs to explain why and prove he was right to stick to his guns.
A good manager will also manage the expectations of the fans, you won’t hear the manager of a newly promoted side tell the fans that they will be challenging for a European place or the title.

A web designer’s fans are his clients and their users, and the best way to please your clients and their users is to produce a good final result. Like a football manager, a web designer has to listen to his fans, find out what they want, what they expect, but at the same time be brave enough to tell them when they are wrong, why they don’t need Flash landing page, and then prove to them why he was right.

A good web designer will have to manage their client’s expectations, they need to know and understand that you can’t produce a trophy winning website with unrealistic deadlines and a small budget.

Earning the Big Jobs

You don’t get to be the manager of a global footballing institute without having earned it. If you want to be the manager of Liverpool, Real Madrid or Inter Milan, you will have probably had to have managed Yeovil Town, Las Palmas or Reggina. You have to start with the smaller jobs and work your way up to the bigger jobs, and earn the right to manage a big club. If you try and win the big job too soon, and manage to, it’s very likely that you will soon find yourself out of your depth and struggling to please the fans.

The same can be said for a web designer. You’ll probably begin your career working on smaller not so interesting jobs that don’t pay too well whilst you are learning your trade. However after a few year’s experience and pleasing your ‘fans’ along the way, you’ll be ready for some bigger jobs. Jobs that have more demanding fans and jobs that will require you to put to good use all of the experience you gained on the smaller jobs. After a few more years, you should be ready for the biggest jobs. These clients have the highest of expectations and only the best will do, but by now you should be well equipped to handle this job, and you’ll be winning trophies in no time.

The question to ask yourself at the end of all this, if you were to compare your design processes and knowledge as a designer to that of a football manager – what type of manager would you be, a manager of team who is tactically astute, plays attractive football and has the full support of the fan base; or the manager of a struggling underachieving side whose fans are calling for your resignation?