Project Management Archives
A realistic chat about design process
April 18, 2006 | 
5 Comments
There has been all sorts of talk about the role and process of design in various Web design communities of late. in that there’s been lots of differing opinion. Some feel you don’t need any sort of exploratory phases or documentation and that jumping straight to some sort of real deliverable is best. Others feel Information Architecture is a bit redundant as a practice. Still others doubt the value of design all together. I could go on…
I’ve held back from formulating a strong opinion on any of this. I can see pros and cons to almost everything I’ve been hearing as it relates to design process. (Those folks who doubt the value of design altogether are off their rocker.) As someone who has worked within many different processes, from the very, very rigid (Microsoft and Boeing) to the more freewheeling (Blue Flavor) and those in-between (Children’s and PBDH) I think I’ve seen quite a lot.
I’ve also been in the position to change that process numerous times. That’s neither fun nor easy.
Through all of this the one thing I’ve learned beyond a shadow of a doubt is that no design process is perfect. I also think it’s safe to say that your design process need to be able to adapt to the particular project you’re working on.
There is no “one size fits all” design process. It can (and probably should) vary greatly depending on the work style of the designer, the needs of the stakeholders, the budget, ect. Again, I could go on…
In theory I tend to lean towards the process with less overhead. Keep it simple, present “usable” deliverables as early on as you can, iterate often and make small course corrections as you go.
Having said that, I don’t jump straight into HTML. I usually start on paper and usually do quite a bit of exploratory work on my own. This is something I bill our clients for, yet they hardly ever see it. That might seem strange to some, but it’s something I use to get my creative juices flowing. I also like to do quite a bit of discovery with my clients to make sure I understand their problems really well. This often involves documentation of some kind. I know…blasphemy!
All of this works very well with my own working style. It’s really too bad I’ve usually got to work with others…
;0)
At Blue Flavor we try for a very collaborative design process. This means that we need to be very flexible with our clients. Nick and I are usually the players from our team working on the design. He’s much more, let’s say, “documentation”, oriented than I am. However, this often plays to our advantage. One problem with “getting real” to quickly is that when you’ve got to go back, you’ve got more rework to do.
By using documentation you can often get buy off on a direction early, thus saving you rework down the road.
But it’s a balance right? When we’ve got clients with tight budgets, for example, we need to lose some of that documentation and explorative design. Basically they have to trust us to come up with a good solution as we don’t have the budget to get buy off via documentation. As well, certain types of documentation—wireframes come to mind—often present their own problems.
This can be awkward for me as I like to go into the design process full understanding the problem and I like to spend time exploring various solutions. If the budget won’t allow for that, I need to change my process. Be flexible and all that. It’s not ideal for me, but I try and make it work.
The goal of any design process should be to get to the best possible design or solution. (I don’t believe in a perfect solution.) How you get to that design could very well vary from project to project. I try to find patterns that seem to work and stick to those when I feel it’s appropriate. I never go into a project thinking that I absolutely will or absolutely wont do something. I let the project tell me what I need to do.
Since starting Blue Flavor I’ve had a bit of a different design process for every project I’ve worked on. I’m happy (as I can be, when you’re dealing with clients things tend to come out a bit different on the opposite side no matter what you do) with every design we’ve done so far, and our clients are too. (Hopefully we’ll have some stuff for y’all to look at soonish!) I wish I could sit here and tell you how it was done, but I’d have to tell a different story with each project.
I think that’s as it should be.
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Scoping Projects
November 16, 2005 | 28 Comments
It’s been a little while! I’ve been working really hard the last few weeks and have had very little extra time, thus the silence. Blue Flavor has been going very well, I’ve been greatly enjoying it and it’s demanded almost all my attention! ;0)
We’ve got clients now. Quite a few of them in fact. And projects! You know—work and all that. We’re still a small team (although that may change relatively soon) and we’ve all been having to wear multiple hats. One day I’m doing client work. The next business development or project management or something else that needs doing.
It’s funny because some of the tasks that I used to hate I’m now growing to enjoy. Working for yourself can do that. In any case, one of the things that’s been on all our minds is how best to scope and budget our projects.
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