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Razorfish Sued For "Shoddy Web Site"
GusherJizmac writes "I know it's not totally on subject, but Razorfish is currently being sued over the website they did for IAM. IAM claims that "Razorfish breached the Agreement with IAM.com by delivering wholly inadequate deliverables and services." Could this set a precendent for the quality required for custom built software?" I dunno, maybe it's because of the time I spent working at a web design place, but this just seems funny to me. Update by RM 5:32 p.m. EST: link and typo corrected
I clicked on a link on the front page and got a new window. Then I clicked on another one. New window. I kept going. Four clicks, four new windows. Two of which had the menu, buttons and status bar removed. If I were IAM, I'd be pissed too. JohnnyB
JohnnyB - johnbowman.net
Contract work is probably familiar territory for many O S developers, as is the idea of requirements; but many amateur hackers are not that well informed.
I've been involved in some large projects where specification of requirements, deliverables, functionality and schedule are at least as significant to the project as the coding itself.
If there was a mutually agreed-upon contract, and it stipulated certain requirements such as UI standards, performance, stability (MTBF for example), failsafes, and adherence to specified constraints - and if the delivered product does not live up to the contract - and the contractee loses bussiness, customers or any other resource as a result, than the contractor is liable. They have breached the contract.
Imagine being a company with something to sell. You get some funding, and you take out start-up loans. You hire a bunch of coders to develop your online presence, and you advertise it's expected availability. Your business plan calls for the site to start generating revenue the day it goes live, and your product can support this plan. But, on openning day, your site is useless due to being poorly developed, and the bank is expecting you to start paying off that loan... What would YOU do to the contractor, if you are facing huge fines, and the site is a piece of junk?
I certainly hope that this will set a precedent. This sort of accountability has always been there in mission-critical, safety-critical and heavy-financial systems. Now that B2B and eCommerce and all that other buzz is a major economic force, I certainly hope that the expectations placed on developers of such systems will rise to a 'professional' standard.
At this point in time, a high-school drop-out with marginal VB skills can get a well paying job and end up costing a great deal of money while doing a great deal of damage. This needs to change.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Actual quote from the CEO of a company I used to work for ...
...and *NEVER* mention that it's written in perl. If they ask what it's written in, just say, 'The next version will be written in Java.'"
"Enterprise software is sold 100% on how well the Powerpoint presentation looks.
They also played nice little games like "Sales people are not allowed to say 'no' in response to 'Do you support X'" and "If they've given us a single penny, even if they bought a soda out of our vending machine while they were watching a demo, then they're a customer so we can use their icon on our website."
This sounds reasonable to me. IAM is claiming that Razorfish failed to fulfill the terms of its contract with IAM. This is just like any other agreement - fail to deliver what was promised, and you are in breach of contract. Of course, I don't know whether Razorfish is actually guilty, but the suit itself is nothing out of the ordinary.
There is one thing in the suit that bothers me, though. I work for a company that develops web sites (note: we do not compete with Razorfish), and so I can attest to how difficult it can be to get a client to sign off on a deliverable. This can be really bad for deadlines, because often you must stop development until the client has responded. If your project has deadlines, as most do, you have to get the client to respond, or they start complaining that you're missing deadlines, even though it's their fault. I think Razorfish is perfectly within its rights to demand (as long as it's in the contract) that their client signs off within a certain time, and five days (assuming they mean business days, this is a week) is certainly time enough to review most deliverables before signing off (or rejecting). Not to mention that IAM knew this requirement was in the contract when they signed it. As for the argument that there can be latent bugs that do not show up in that time, face it, there is no amount of time that would guarantee you would find all the latent bugs. Besides, the sign off is necessary more for terms of UI/design than functionality. Obviously, Razorfish should still be responsible for fixing any (hidden) bugs that turn up after sign-off.
I looked at the code for the front page of the iam.com site, and I personally would never deliver such poor quality code to a client. I would be ashamed to put my name on it. At a quick glance, I saw errors in syntax, fundamental logic errors, and appallingly bad formatting of code. It doesn't work with browsers with Javascript turned off, it doesn't fail gracefully (it just dies without presenting a courteous message explaining the problem) and it doesn't work for a text-only browser (which means it could cause problems for the blind).
I know from experience that it's perfectly possible to make a modern, interactive web page with attractive DHTML features and still have it be compatible with Lynx and usable with a screen reader and deliver polite error messages to users with incompatible browsers. It's not even difficult.
If the iam.com site that I saw is the one they're suing over, I'm not surprised they're suing.
If that's the case, not sure if I really have any sympathy. When you set up something as important as your web presence, seems like you should be involved a little more early on in QC.
According to the filing, Razorfish's contract requires the customer to accept or reject deliverables within five days
Gotta read the fine print in those contracts _before_ you make a down-payment. This is BS. I would think if this thing is of any significant size, you would insist on a period of _weeks_ for acceptance test. Chalk this up to inexperience on the part of the customer, I guess?
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
The whole development period, including refinements, that is - I've been working there about five months.
D
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yep
Whoa...I need to check your sarcasm filter, I guess. Are you suggesting that your three bullet points are not valid lawsuits? Now I'm the first to agree when you say there are too many frivious lawsuits in the world, so I'll dismiss your first example. If a mechanic does a shitty job, you don't sue, you go to a different mechanic.
But, if I have my spleen removed because I was misdiagnosed and actually only needed a good foot massage to be cured, then I assure you that I'm gonna lay the wrath of Johnny Cochran on that worthless quack.
Further, the building contractor that I just put myself in debt for to build my dream house is going to either fix those cracks or face my team of legal eagles.
Or am I missing something? Anyway, it all comes down to the verbiage of the contract. I severely doubt that the web designers signed a contract that stated the client had to be happy with the work done. In my book, they get the mechanic treatment. Take your web design work to someone else.
We must respect evil, and we must make evil respect us.
That clients can't sue website's for constantly changing designs. Have you ever tried to link to something on the M$ site? It seems like they change the location of pages almost daily.
End-User-License-Agreements governing the use of mass-market software usually contain this type of clause (this one is from MS's Internet Explorer):
"DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, MICROSOFT AND ITS SUPPLIERS ... HEREBY DISCLAIM ... ALL WARRANTIES AND CONDITIONS, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ANY (IF ANY) WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF OR RELATED TO: TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, LACK OF VIRUSES, ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF RESPONSES, RESULTS, LACK OF NEGLIGENCE OR LACK OF WORKMANLIKE EFFORT, QUIET ENJOYMENT, QUIET POSSESSION, AND CORRESPONDENCE TO DESCRIPTION. THE ENTIRE RISK ARISING OUT OF USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THE OPERATING SYSTEM COMPONENTS AND ANY SUPPORT SERVICES REMAINS WITH YOU."
In other words, MS isn't responsible for any faults associated with IE -- you are. Specifically, MS (and software publishers that use similarly worded EULAS) is not responsible for:
1. Ensuring that IE is not infected by viruses,
2. Selling a product that corresponds to description (i.e. a web browser that really is a web browser),
3. Selling a product that functions as it is supposed to (i.e. a web browser that really functions as a web browser),
4. Ensuring that MS products are of sufficient quality and fit to be sold (covered by the all-important implied warranty of merchantability
Also, notice that MS attempts to disclaim all Express Warranties. An express warranty is created when a vendor makes a factual assertion or promise about a product to a consumer. The express warranty guarantees that such assertions are reflected in the product. For instance, if a software publisher representative (at a trade show)stood on a table and proclaimed "My product can accomplish X!", an express warranty would be created that the product must be able to accomplish X.
Corporations can sue other corporations over breach of implied/express warranties and shoddy workmanship. Consumers, on the other hand (esp. after the proliferation of industry-sponsored laws like UCITA) do not have the same luxury.
ph33r UCITA.
-Vergil
Insects and Grafitti Photos
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Paul
I don't know the particulars of this case, I used to do work as a graphic artist. I remember customers demanding outrageous concessions as a condition of giving us the work. From people who walk in with a shoebox full of slides that needed scanning and expected to pick them back up in two hours to people who wanted custom 10 minute 3D animation sequences done(from concpetualization to final rendering) over a weekend.
If Razorfish met the conditions of the contract, they should be able to counter sue. People need to know that content designers will give you WHAT YOU ASK FOR and not necessarily what you want.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
You know, they may have a point... that is a pretty shitty website. Totally disorganized, and ugly gfx.
I own a small Dev. hut, and if we pumped out shit like that, we would be out of business.
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
Why would such a company buy a site from a 3rd party anyway? It seems that all that that company does is operate that site. It's kind of like operating a search engine and buying all of the data from another search engine.
If all that they do is operate that site, how do they expect to be competitive? How are they going to keep current, and add features, if they have not got the ability to do so in house?
Another point, why would you enter into such an agreement. "Here kid, write me a website that I will operate and make money off of. I will pay you a one time flat rate for your services, and I will make all of the real money that is to be made from this site." Again, it doesn't make sense. If someone said, "I have a great idea for a site, want to write it for me but not get the money for it." The words "screw you, buddy," would probably be the first to come to my mind.
They have no room to complain that the site is not everything that they expected. In software engineering, it is discussed that specifications need to be excellent in order to determine that the programmer's vision is the same as the client's vision. If you didn't specify something in these documents, and it isn't as you magically guessed that they would appear in the final product, you really don't have much room to complain. This is a good part of the process of software engineering, that's why we have "validation." Verification and Validation. Is it working right? and Is it doing the right thing?
In short, if your only product is your web site, you should at least write the daggon web site.
Eh...
Personally, though, I rather like the website they have - uncluttered and to the point. What's wrong with it?
According to the filing, Razorfish's contract requires the customer to accept or reject deliverables within five days. IAM claims that this provision is "unconscionable," and that latent defects and late delivery prevented it from learning about all of the site's alleged problems within the five-day period.
I'm not exactly sobbing into my beer because these bozos signed a contract containing provisions that they now have a problem with. Reading the contract (and I mean going through every bloody line) is essential in a business deal. I remember working for a company which was negotiating a deal with a client. We went back and forth with a contract, adding and deleting each time. We thought we were done and went to their city to sign it. They provided us with a cleaned-up 'final' copy and wanted it signed right then. We declined and took it back to our hotel room and went through it line by line, comparing it to our working copy. We discovered that the devious bastards had snuck in a provision for us to provide them free training. Moral: read the damned contract!
I think IAS ought to sue Hemos for causing their innocent-bystander website to be slashdotted.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
Having said that, from my experience, disatisfaction with sites done by consulting companies is usually the result of one of the following:
The only real question is did they meet the terms of their contract? If not, they should be given the opportunity to do so, or have their fees pro-rated.
The site they put together looked pretty good to me, albeit, I had to turn javascript on in order to use it.
-- Good judgement comes with experience. -- Experience comes with bad judgement.
What makes this lawsuit different is the fact that the judgement aganist their website is a subjective one, instead of a solid, defined metric. When your car breaks, you know to blame the mechanic. When your family member gets awful sick, you can blame the doctor. When your wall cracks, you blame the contractor. When your new website or piece of software isn't what you had in mind, who is there to blame? No one but yourself. The programmer might have been completely happy with his work - overjoyed, in fact. How many artists do you see estatic about their work, except when you look at it you see smeared colors that aren't even complementary? If the software/website works, and you didn't take pains to define things beyond, then the programmer is not to blame.
Read the article with this in mind - the only solid, grounded complaint I could discern was that it "couldn't be accessed" with AOL 4.0. Of course, by the time that "couldn't be accessed" makes it through a few levels of lawyers and executives it probably means that there was something as simple as a misdirected refresh, or perhaps one that's automatic on other platforms. The "buy-side tool" being "unusable"? Unusable is a completely subjective term. It might be something as simple as a UI paradigm difference between programmer and user. That happens all the time.
This is not a new issue for programmers. Companies have long since had a problem digesting the usually vague and uncertain requirements of their customers. The solution these days seems to be formal requirements specifications - a huge, unwiedly document that details the layout of every page, and the behavior of every icon, button and widget that exists. If you're creating software, any other type of contract is too vague to be of use.
Don't get me wrong, I think there should be more accountability in the software world. I'm a huge fan of a standard software engineer registry board - something similar to the other engineering disciplines. But the industry isn't quite ready for that just yet. Soon, though.
I'm not affiliated with Razorfish whatsoever, but I used to casually know one of the executives there, and I think your estimate of $40k-100k for the website is awfully low. It _is_ a crime how much some of these firms are charging, but the guy I knew at Razorfish led me to believe their average fee is closer to $1 million, and it's very hard to do much of anything with them for less than $400-600k. YMMV, though.
Since I work in the same industry, it's a scary precedent.
Is this lawsuit over design principles, as in did they just not like the graphical design? Or is it because they feel Razorfish did a half-ass job and are they prepared to show demonstrations of negligence?
I agree that the client should be able to complain when they feel they've gotten piss-poor service, however, being that I have to meet with clients and that nomatter how much I try to push them in the right direction, they often stick to the wrong direction. Who's fault is it then? Do we go "I told you so" and then have them sue us for not convincing them enough?
While I think this could be a good lawsuit for our market (it'll make us fess-up), at the same time, there is a lot of consulting, subjective decision-making, and guesswork involved in bringing companies into the internet market.
I'll admit I know nothing about the internal workings of this particular engagement, but I do know four things:
I just wonder who they'll be able to get for their next site redesign when they sue their previous agency for standard practices.
PS: An 'AOL 4.0 browser' is actually one of over 9 different browsers depending on platform, OS, and AOL whim.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
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Looks like someone would rather have been hacking.
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People need to know that content designers will give you WHAT YOU ASK FOR and not necessarily what you want.
I think this is a very large problem: A lot of companies don't know what they want. Are they supposed to bring someone in (a liason, of sorts) so that the company's web site contractees don't fuck up? Maybe they should.
Of course, as any company contracting out their web site should know, web sites aren't easy to make. Creativity has to be bought as an intangible asset. And sometimes one person's vision of good is another person's vision of shit.
Of course, navigation is either good, bad or ugly(bad times 10). Same with a shopping cart system. These things are implemented so regularly, it's a wonder people still fuck them up.
I think a good rule of thumb before going to a company to 'buy' a web site, is to SURF THE NET. Tell the designers: "I want this thing, but in blue" or "we want the whole site to be made of triangles". Restrict their creative movement, and you shall get what you want AND what you ask for.
rLowe
----- rL
The filing also alleges that "IAM.com is informed that virtually every aspect of the site developed by Razorfish fails to meet IAM.com's needs, or basic levels of workmanship in the (W)eb development industry."
And later:
Razorfish is known as one of the leading firms in the Web design industry. It has created pages and sites for AOL, NBC, Warner Music Group, PBS, Polygram Filmed Entertainment and Fox Kids.
So this web design company, apparently well known with many satisfied clients, suddenly decided to suck for IAM? Now, I'm no expert, but except for the over-usage of pop-up windows, IAM didn't look all that bad. I would certainly think that their site meets "basic levels of workmanship in the (W)eb development industry."
But then again, IANAL.
---
Gort! Klatu Barata Nikto!
I get a blank page. *ALL* of the content is inside an HTML comment.
You can't even get to the *FIRST PAGE* unless your browser has full JavaScript support.
That's pretty shoddy.
The table inside the comment just makes it more obvious that it's shoddy work; no one gave any thought to the structure of the page.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Alright, I'm a bit late inta this one, but as I know a few people at RasorFish, USWeb/CKS, and the rest, lemme take a few stabs at providing background.
1) COST. Someone said "they probably paid 50-100K for this." Er, last I checked USWeb/CKS's lowest billing rate is $300/hr (compare to $395/hr. for a junior partner at a local law firm such as HEWM). Looking over IAM and a RFP from USWeb, I'd guess that USWeb would have bid over $1 million on this site, and RazorFish probably put in $600-800K. (Assuming prices haven't changed in 6 months).
2) DELIVERABLES. USWeb, according to reputation, bids high and gets the work done more or less within budget; RazorFish, and many others, tend to bid low to get the contract and then pile on additional costs as "unforseen" events arize. Usually this stuff is retainer work anyway...
3) WHAT THEY COMPLAINING ABOUT??? The site is, really, pretty typical and average for what web design companies produce: nothing that 20 bright college kids couldn't do by looking at any firms' clients' pages and replicating... they asked for what a web design firm produces, they got what a web design firm produces. Caveat Emptor.
4) THE WEB DESIGN INDUSTRY IS LUDICROUS. OK, I know USWeb the best, and they run an incredibly tight shop that... well, works (slowly but surely) by strict adherance to formulas, guidelines and regulations. (Don't even mention perl if you want to be hired by them!). But billing at $300/hr and up for this crap? The work because Marketing is Big, CKS is a Real Ad Firm, and their clients Don't Know A Fuck about what is going on.
Should the law intervene? How? Should RazorFish be regulated -- or fools like IAM?
(or: was PT Barnum right when he said "never call a man a fool -- take his money!")
Lemme offer a counterpoint: Business Week recently offered up tidbits from the Boo.com fiasco -- like the founders' weekly trips on the Concorde. Something about the Valley and Technology seems to inspire a total lack of financial oversight... and that money, after all, comes from somewhere...
I am constantly surprised at how willing people are to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on products that myself and a few others could probably build to suit in a week, and on conferences for information I've know for six months.
My respect for a company is inversely proportional to the number of buzzwords it uses in its presentations and glossyware.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Fat load of good that does me if I don't have access to or want to use Javascript...
Oh wait, you mean like a page they made for somebody else? My god, people actually pay for this kind of crap?
:)
(Heh. Actually I interviewed with them and would have been perfectly happy to ignore the atrocity of their home site if it meant I could have lived in London for a few months, but it didn't work out and now I have no reason to stick up for their site. And that's too bad too, because they actually have some smart people working there. Not doing their own site apparently, but they are on the payroll... :)
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
They did do something that's been pissing me off more and more lately. They check what version of browser you're using, and THEY determine if you have the right browser for the job.
I run my home connection through a proxy server, and I strip all of that information on the way out, so a great many site won't let me at their content AT ALL, because it says I have an insufficient browser (I'm running Netscape 4.73).
It's simple, I just refuse to visit a site that does this...and IAM.com does this (not that I'd visit anyways).
-Jer
How'd you like the website that you designed dissected into its component quarks by a planetful of generally-grumpy computer pros? The thought sends chills down my spine.
Razorfish bills themselves out (and is generally accepted to be) one of the top web design firms in the world. Their portfolio is AMAZING.
If the web site shown for this company is the one Razorfish built, then they SHOULD be sued.
I mean, what are you supposed to do if the work you paid for is complete crap?
*braces for incoming karma hit*
This is a Chao. A Chao says "Mu."
I would have to see the terms of the contract to be certain, but it looks like this is a case of a customer not knowing what he wants, and getting a confused mess as a result.
If you have to put work on a contract on hold for five days while the customer decides if they like the product, that five days can seem awfully long. I just saw at least three posts that say "That certainly is a shitty site". If it's that obviously garbage, why did it take AIM more than five days to figure it out? The answer is that they probably had no clue what they wanted or needed, and this was reflected in the requirements that they submitted to Razorfish.
Unlike medical or construction services, there is no clear cut "good" or "bad" for web design. There are a few serious faux pas', and some major no-no's, but nowhere in a web design is there a statement like "Rule 12: Don't make it ugly!". On the other hand, there could be a few minimum standards for usability. Things like "can you get to a full description of any product in four clicks or less?"
The user interface on the maintenance software is another issue entirely. Having been required to do specs that describe a user interface right down to the usability of the selected colors I have to suggest that, again, if they didn't get what they wanted at the end then they didn't know what they wanted at the beginning. The only way to do business with people that want to squander your time with indecision is to make them pay for you time or stop doing business with them. Guess which one Razorfish picked...
In the case listed in this article, you have to ask the question "does it do what the customer asked for in the contract." and "Could the contractor (Razorfish, in this case) logically have deduced the demands on the table from the requests on the contract". Another question that I would LOVE to toss into this is "how much interference did the customer present to providing the demanded capabilities."
Mythological Beast
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
This is small time stuff. The Big 6 (I think it's big 5 now) consulting companies do this all the time, and don't pay a dime, because they have lawyers, not programmers, detailing the deal.
:)
Once in a while, big companies like IBM, Anderson consulting or Price waterhouse get sued, but generally, they don't. Also, the failure rate for large scale projects of the scale undertaken by the big 5 is something over 50%. Ask anyone who has worked (as a programmer, not a manager) on these custom turn-key contract projects, and they'll tell you that in most cases, these companies do a really slick job of presentations/slides/drawing rectangles and flow-charts and generally throwing around industry buzzwords. These are invariably targeted at the VP and above level, and technical details are considered an afterthought. In a project I worked on, the partner of the software firm (a big 6 company) who presented and finalized a 20 million $ software deal was a lawyer.
Predicting whether the project was successfully done, and whether the company was held liable if it wasn't, is left as an exercise to the readers.
w/m
PS - I'm sure this isn't a rarity. Please post your experiences in cases like this. It's generally pretty hilarious.
- A mechanic was sued for the poor job he did on a client's car.
- A doctor was sued for the poor and unprofessional diagnosis he gave a patient.
- A building contractor was sued over the fact that the walls in the house he built just six months ago started cracking.
I don't really see any reason to sue here, but I do think that good work should be expected of web designers. Usually, where I work, the client is shown what is going on in the process, and things they don't like are changed, provided that their requests are reasonable.--
sounds like IAM is whining to me. If they were unhappy with the service, they should have said so during their "evaluation period" of five days. As far as razorfish submitting late work.. who knows? both sides probably share the blame. But IAM had five days - under the razorfish contract - to refuse the site, and they didn't.. they paid for it anyway, and later changed their minds.. so now their sueing..
is it me, or does it seem like companies sue each other for the press these days..
wish
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Yup. I could see that. Oracle invaded with a dozen developers and fancy titles, burned through money for two years and left.
With no product.
I left before Oracle gave up - but I had fought tooth and nail against them only because there was a product in place that was working fine with FAR fewer bells and whistles that Oracle wanted to slap on. It was written in Foxpro/TeleMagic, and *did* need to be replaced, but really had rather simple requirements.
Of course, it's not only the big guys that can screw the pooch hard on projects. The next guy in charge hired a VB developer to design the whole thing. The developer started coding, and then started popping up with questions like "what does this company do again?". That's when I knew IT there was screwed.
Guess what? They are still using the FoxPro/TeleMagic app. And it's working... just okay.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Bravo, bravo, bravo!
I'd like to suggest that everyone who is a web author, and certainly everyone who makes any claim to be a web designer, should read Steve McConnell's "Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules" and "Software Development Survival Guide." They are recognized as authorative, leading texts on Best Practices in software design.
Web design is similar to software design, and you will learn how to do your work faster, better and with fewer mistakes. You will learn the importance of emphasizing up-front design (it's a minimum twenty times cheaper to catch your errors early than later) and how to control risks, client change demands and schedules.
You can visit Steve's site [here], where you'll find some outtakes from his books, his columns on software development best practices, and other good stuff.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Let me tell you a story that happened to me and I'll let you judge again IAM's decision to sue:
It was around July of last year. My company was embarking upon an ambitious project to revamp and dramatically extend our website. Being a pure Internet company, our website is our lifeblood. At the time I was away on other business, and did not take part in the RFPs and other negotiations, but suffice it to say that when I got back, we had hired a very large Web development company that is a direct competitor of Razorfish's, and about the same size.
They assured us that they could deliver on time (by October) and within budget on the detailed requirements that we had provided them. I was skeptical, because in my view they weren't anywhere near technical enough. Anyway, I let it ride because I wasn't in charge of the project at the time.
What did we get from them? NOTHING.
Oh yes, we did get some stuff, mostly garbage and absolutely NO ACCEPTABLE DELIVERABLE whatsoever. By the time we fired them, we had ourselves created a site map, flow and UI designs. In fact, for the site map they took ours and reposted it as a deliverable without even removing the initials of our person who wrote it!
They showed us a design for the home page one day. I asked how they'd actually code it. "What do you mean?" "Well, it's a cute Photoshop picture, now I want to see it in HTML." "No problem." "Trust me, your design is crap, there's no way you can turn that into usable HTML." "Our coders are good." "No way, the layout is impossible to turn into HTML, too many curves." etc..etc..
They spent 2 weeks trying to make that one design work. I then spent 1 week debugging it and cleaning all the crap out to try to make it work, and it still would break under MacOS IE&NS, Linux NS,etc... Then we scrapped the whole thing, fired them, and got down to business. We had 2 weeks to go before the big launch (we were spending $10MM on marketing for it). We hired a few freelance people (ended up hiring one full time) and did the whole thing ourselves, and managed to release on time, with a few all-nighters in between. Had we not fired them at that time, we would have lost all of our marketing budget and certainly gone bankrupt by now.
If a company that you entrust to create your consumer experience makes a mistake, you are dead.
I wonder how much marketing money IAM lost on this fiasco. Remember, you pay TV and Radio Spots well in advance....
If they have any sense, they'll have professional liability insurance. For a company of our size, it's about $1.2K/year. Totally essential. For Razorfish, it'd be closer to $100K/year, I imagine. Still totally worth having, and it'll save their ass in this case.
Note: IANAIA. (I Am Not An Insurance Agent)
-Waldo
dear god, i'd be stunned if *any* company missed a deadline, but a SOFTWARE COMPANY!?!?!? Lord Jesus, say it ain't so!
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
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Granted. They probably did pay a lot. There are plenty of firms that would've done it for less, but I'd imagine they wanted a firm with a strong reputation. RF can charge high dollar prices because they feel their real-world expertise in dealing with other high profile clients (RazorFish doesn't even try for anything but high-profile well-funded companies) is worth more than UnknownFirm. This makes them feel "safe" even if UnknownFirm could've done better work/lower price/etc.
Huh? What does this have to do with deliverables? Anyway, my firm does none of these things. Our contracts cover finite projects and we do nothing "unforseen" (sic) as we prefer to remain honest. Design firms that don't will soon find that an easy buck now could cost them future projects. Don't condemn the entire industry on your (limited?) experience.
OK, first, the article makes "what they are complaining about" clear. You're basically saying absolutely nothing aside from implying that "20 bright college kids" could design on the same level as RazorFish. I challenge you to prove this. And...Caveat Emptor? Always. As with any product, you should do some comparison shopping.
For such a strong subject and equally strong itemized list, you sure have nothing to say. Are you rehashing the price thing again? Big marketing always brings big prices. Honestly, companies that want huge returns understand that they don't come cheaply. It's fun to say they don't know what's going on though, isn't it?
I agree that there is certainly room for anyone (in any industry) to be paid too much for sub par work. Assuming the allegations are true, RazorFish won't get away without a tarnished reputation. There are other Fish in the sea. And they're even different colors and sizes. Maybe you should have a look for yourself before claiming to know "How Web Design Firms Work".
And seriously, aside from the pricing practices of one firm (and unproven conjecture about a competing firm) you don't really explain how anything works. Defending sweeping generalizations is a bitch, isn't it?
*gel
Moderate this down as redundant if you want, but perhaps this should serve as a wake-up call to other shoddy designers of web sites that fail to function if Java is disabled or not supported, JavaScript is disabled or not supported, or certain plugins are disabled or not installed (I'm not saying don't use those them). Some people turn JavaScript off because too many web sites have taken advantage of it to do nasty annoying things (banner popups, disabling the exit button, etc.); others turn Java off because it slows down their computer; same with plugins; others turn cookies off due to privacy concerns; someday more people are going to turn just about everything off of their web browsers out of privacy concerns and things like that. Someday this could really mean a loss of audience. Maybe that's not why IAM is suing Razorfish, but I wouldn't be surprised that such lackadesical attitudes towards browser compatibility if it were the subject of lawsuits someday if not now.
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This web site will cure all your ailments.
I was about to take this article seriously and post a comment on how this case can be easily resolved. If a company hires another to write a piece of software, standard practice is to give them a requirements document containing specifications which range from must-haves to wish-list items. So unless the New Economy has discarded common business practices of the past several decades, this issue can be resolved by checking on the requirements document, unless of course it contains crap like "The website must be cool!!!".
Unfortunately after reading the entire article twice I realized that this was simply another failed dot comm in it's death throes clutching at straws, rhetoric like "IAM.com is informed that virtually every aspect of the site developed by Razorfish fails to meet IAM.com's needs, or basic levels of workmanship in the (W)eb development industry." sounds exactly the kind of E-commerce/E-marketplace/New Economy newspeak that such entities are prone to use. Also
From the article:
IAM, which laid off 25 percent of its staff last month, is currently embroiled in a legal battle with four former employees that it says violated their contracts by trying to start a competing company and fraudulently dealing with IAM. The four in turn are suing IAM, alleging that IAM stole their business plan.
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I've been in the web design industry for several years now and I've been on both sides of the wall - both as an employee of a web design shop and an employee of a company that hired a web design shop. The problem for web designers is that a) the technology is ever-changing so that if you start a project that lasts for more than 6 mos., chances are that by the time you are done there's a new version of somebody's browser out that doesn't work quite right with the site you were just about done with. b) clients don't understand that they can't just show up at the last minute and make changes to the requirements, or that requirements need to be set at the get-go. c) projects managers internal to the web design shop don't realize that a "small change" made half-way through implementation can have a huge effect on the project schedule. That said, I was recently laid off from a job I'd been at for a whole 2 months in large part because the design shop that had been contracted to build the initial e-commerce site dropped the ball, did practically no analysis/design, and produced a product with enough bugs in it to make microsoft prowd. If there had been formal requirements documents agreed upon before work began (I wasn't close to the management team there, so I don't know for sure) then I think that the company should have been sued. Several million down the tubes and nearly 200 jobs lost because some developers thought that they could get the job done quicker by skimping on the design phase (their internal design documents were litterally written on cocktail napkins). It's the same thing as if you were starting a company and hired a company to build you an office building, and then they were to build the house without any blueprints. Sure there's a house there, but how safe is it and how does it look? If it was your company wouldn't you sue?
This should be a wakeup call for the hit and run web designer industry.
I've got a client whose websites are all hacked up e-commerce packages. Its really funny trying to navigate some of their internal sites. Everything has a shopping basket, and after you perform each action you procede to the checkout stand. This includes a website for inventory management and some basic groupware functions. To sign up for a meeting, you place it in your basket and check out. To retrieve your group's weekly work plan, you place the request in your basket and proceed to the check out function. To submit a helpdesk trouble ticket for a network problem, into the basket. When I have to find the list of open problems I cover, I have to add them to my basket before I can view them.
Despite a ton of complaints, most of the mangement think this is the only way the web can work. And the web developers skip out with a ton of money after a very short development cycle.
There are thousands of horror stories out there, its about time a company struck back at an incompetent group of web monkeys. With some legal prosecution of a few bad apples, the market will shake out the worst and web site design will become a little more sane.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
How'd you like to be the webmaster at IAS.com? Here you're suddenly hammered by a horde of slashdotters showing up, and you're going "What the f...?" Then you go over to SlashDot and find out that your site has been incorrectly linked in a story about IAM.com, but that everyone's saying, "yeah, that site really is a piece of feces. They oughta sue." Gotta ruin your day.
They are a fuckedcompany.
At least I have a new pick for this next week...
Well, since you cannot log in wiht out paying $$$ I don't think anyone can really say if it meets specs or not.
In my opinion I would never sign a contract to provide a web app that would work with any AOL browser. Maybe I'd have a page that would display to AOL users telling them to download IE or Netscape. But that's about it. It's not reasonable to specify neat multimedia and glitz that will view on, in my opinion, a substandard product.
Given the fact that the site was designed for a company that consists of agents and marketing people, I wouldn't doubt that the look, feel and specs of the web site was a moving target.
I'm sorry is it me or does everyone hear the word 'feature' ringing in their skull?
If it says in the contract that the website must work under AOL 4.0, then it must work under AOL 4.0 or they can sue. What if you paid for a house to be handicapped accessable and the didn't bother to put ramps for your wheelchair? You could sue that contractor as well.
It may be a grey area over what's "accessable" or not, but there are tons of similar lawsuits. This is a non-issue.
Could this set a precendent for the quality required for custom built software?"
Well, I work in the consulting biz, and its not like people haven't been sued for delivering, um, custom software of a questionable quality before. Usually (if you are smart), you have a set of criteria and metrics that your deliverable will have to meet in order for the contract to be considered fulfilled. Now, if you are just suing saying "my website sucks", that probably isn't specific enough to get anywhere. If you say "My contract required no pages load in more than 30 sec over a 28.8 modem on average...." you may have a case.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Maybe it's because Razorfish does big sites, but I wouldn't trust a web design company to make a site from scratch without checking in periodically.
:)
I think some of the fault here lies with IAM.com. Most companies like to see some sort of rough layout of a design before things proceed, especially on a big site. If IAM.com didn't stipulate that in their contract, then they goofed.
Of course, a web site is not a hamburger. Just because you have a site, doesn't mean that it is edible (ie. usable).
Also keep in mind that IAM.com probably paid 40-100k for this site. It's a crime how much web designers can charge for their (sometimes quite easy, comparatively) work. But Razorfish had a good rep. Now they don't.
rLowe
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