Unstandardized Design

Sometimes good ideas are so obvious that its painful.  Well, this wasn’t exactly one of those times, but it was pretty close.  During the session on process (that is, the process of building a website, from conception to completion) at DrupalCon, I had an enlightened moment.

The first process that was discussed went like this:

Plan -> Design -> Development -> Verify -> Launch -> Training -> Support

I thought to myself “yeah, I’ve done that one” because… I’ve done that one many many times.  The presenter said that it was problematic, with clients wanting design changes made during development.  ”Yeah, I’ve done that one too…” I thought.

The next evolution of the process went like this:

Plan -> Development -> Design -> Verify -> Launch -> Training -> Support

Which the presenter said really turns into:

Plan -> Development -> Design -> Development -> Design -> Development -> Verify -> Late Launch -> Training -> Support

And I thought “yeah, I can see that happening with some projects…”  Then he presented a new process, one that was 15 years (the age of the web, basically) in the making:

Plan -> Wireframe -> Design & Development -> Verify -> Launch -> Training -> Support

The brilliant bit here is that design and development happen at the same time, so that the designers and the developers can actually work together.  I know, what a crazy idea!  Of course this is the best way to build websites, it just can’t be done without a common unifying prototype to build around - the wireframe.

The wireframe of a site in its simplist form is a sketch of how the site will be organized on the page.  From this information, which the client has to sign off on (again, brilliant!), the designer can easily and quickly come up with an attractive presentation.  Meanwhile, the developers don’t have to wait for the designer to finish, because they don’t care about the pretty bells and whistles until very near the end anyway, the just need to know what data is showing up where and how it should be stored and processed.  With the wireframe, we know all of that, and the designer has an idea of what he/she should actually be creating.

Check out the video of the process session - it’s an hour well spent!  And if you watch closely, you’ll see me raise my hand and comment towards the end!