Site design. Project management.

    In the exciting business of website development, the most informal and difficult to control process is design development. Therefore, in order to summarize the experience gained, below I decided to indicate several points that, in my opinion, are often crucial in the development and delivery of website design to the client. Perhaps if experienced colleagues read this, they will find the text a statement of common truths, in which case I will be glad to accept additions and corrections.

    So, two correct documents and one correct measure:

    1. The right brief
      Forming customer expectations at the stage of collecting requirements is the foundation of success. At a meeting to collect site design requirements, the presence of the final decision maker is highly desirable. Then the design presented at the presentation will not be a surprise for him and you will significantly reduce the risks.

      It is no secret that often the client finds it difficult to clearly formulate his vision of the final product and the task of the developer during the conversation, to find out the tasks that are planned to be solved using the site. It is very important to try to find some “highlight” of the client’s business, its competitive advantages, in order to correctly place emphasis. The more information about the client’s business you will receive at the meeting, the more likely that your vision of the future site and the vision of the client will be unified. If so, consider that the design is already done. In the meantime, it’s worth writing down everything you came to in the form of a development brief, this will help you stay on course in the future.
    2. Correct Terms of Reference (TOR)
      Design, although partly related to the visual arts, is still a technological process and we need to draw up a Terms of Reference. I would like to note the following points:
      • Scope of work
        The scope of work of the project determines what is required to be created and what is not required to be created. The second part, with apparent obviousness, most often gives rise to disagreements and unjustified changes in the project.

        In the first part, it is important to list all the blocks, functional and informational elements on the main page, since it is precisely this that is the “face” of the site and the subject of discussion at the presentation. It is also necessary to fix the priorities and accents in the presentation of information, so that at the presentation there would be as few wishes as possible to swap this and that.

        Perhaps it is worth mentioning that the number of developed internal pages should be sufficient to reflect all the unique graphic and functional elements of the site and set the style for displaying standard elements (text styles, images, tables).

        The second part is much more interesting. For example, if the client has only a logo, but there are no company colors and there were no wishes for colors, it is useful to indicate that the client did not make requirements for the color scheme and the color scheme of the site is developed at the discretion of the Contractor and is not subject to approval.

        Particular attention should be paid to the development of illustrations. It is important to inform the client that the use of photographs from photo banks and the creation of unique illustrations are far from the same thing. If the selection of photographs may be included in the cost of developing a design concept, the creation of illustrations should be evaluated separately. In the case when the client pays you not a fixed cost, but the hours spent on the project, this rule, of course, can be neglected. The illustrations also include the development of photo collages, in short everything that requires a lot of iterative changes and generates additional requirements.
      • Order of acceptance
        The specifics of website design is such that you can get an idea of ​​the future site by developing the main and several key internal pages. Moreover, the image part can be estimated already on the main page. Therefore, you should define such a concept as “Design Concept” (DK), which includes the main and one internal page. At the presentation, it is worth presenting only the main page, so that after the final approval of the main page, the creation of an internal page is already a matter of technology. It is very important to sign an interim Acceptance Certificate for a recreation center with two pages in case you have a large number of pages being developed or if the site is under further development. The signed Act is a guarantee that there will be no "minor" changes, because of which you will have to redo all the layouts or even change the layout.

      The correct presentation of the design concept
      Presentation of the design is a rather entertaining event, which sometimes attracts a large number of people and they come up with various fresh ideas. Here, a loyal friend of the developer and, ultimately, the client is the brief and TK. And just like at the stage of collecting requirements, the presence of the person making the final decision is very desirable, otherwise the whole presentation and the recorded changes may be wasted.

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