Hold the designs, we’ve got some planning to do!
In the past, both with enotions, and before at other web agencies with whom we’ve worked, we’ve not been able to wait to get going on designs for customers. It’s been, or at least it always seemed to be, the most exciting bit of a project, seeing what the site would look like. We’d pitch designs to win the work. We’d crack straight on without really knowing what the final content was, what the message of the site was even, in some cases.
But we’ve recently had a complete change of thought and, crucially, approach. We now don’t design until the vision, structure and content has been agreed and finalised. This might sound like an incredibly regimented and inflexible approach but quite the contrary. What it allows you to do is work in an unrestricted fashion, throwing around ideas, visions, pieces of content and approaches without being stuck in a particular direction, forced by a design. Equally, when you’re working with a ‘paper doll’ of a site, changes can be made quickly and easily, unlike designs which require significant work to revise.
By structuring everything out like a map, nothing is left to chance, nothing is forgotten, nothing surprises. And with a detailed and complete site map to hand, designs are then more quickly developed and build is effortless.
Tags: design in the web process, web site design, web site planning, when to start web design
