I’ve been working in interactive since 1997 when, as a college sophomore, I was lucky enough to secure a position at the blossoming Web Development Center at the University of Dayton. The first sites I worked on there were merely brochures. Pages and pages of content that had the same template and very little interaction with the user. A passive experience that was not very engaging.
During the last 15 years, I’ve seen the web design process evolve and grow for the better. Now sites are more meaningful, engaging and interactive for users. They are well-honed through design and engineering to deliver a significant user experience and targeted to a specific audience.
How is this done, you may ask? Well, over the years the process has become similar to building a house and decorating it. Interactive designers are like architects and interior designers.
The requirements
Every house and every web site starts with a set of requirements. A web site needs pages to hold content, navigation to move through the site, calls to action to drive leads, imagery to set the tone, etc. Listening to the client’s complete list of desires is important but more important is understanding the audience, the desires and how they will use the web site. All these requirements must be taken into consideration.
The blueprints
It’s impossible to put every feature identified during requirements gathering on a web site. Sometimes its because of budget. Maybe it doesn’t make sense in the holistic view of the site. Maybe it detracts from the story. Whatever the reason, the features need to be prioritized and documented in wireframes, essentially the blueprint of the web site. Wireframes show the number of pages, the pathways between them and where a user can exit, just as blueprints lay out the bedrooms, bathrooms and living areas.
The swatches
Mood boards play a key role in evaluating the tone of a web site quickly. They are the color palettes, textures, patterns and typography that blend together to form a visual representation of the site. Just like an interior designer armed with fabric swatches, paint chips and tile samples.
Our mood boards are similar to Style Tiles, an approach that has become popular recently, thanks to Samantha Warren, a designer at Twitter. These quick studies make it easy for the client to visualize what their site will look and feel like.
Having prioritized the requirements, created the wireframes and designed the mood boards, it makes it easier for the designers and developers to really focus on delivering the user experience. The process is flexible, more efficient and designed to focus on the user experience of the web site