Iterative website design, discovering problems earlier
Let's set the scene! A new website project comes on board. The team is excited and the client is excited!
- The information architects, designers, developers and the project managers brainstorm ideas at this stage. The possibilities are endless.
- The wire-frames are built with collaboration between IA and Design.
- Design starts with shifting pixels around until we have a harmonised layout.
- The client is happy and signs off on the wireframes and design.
- Website Development starts, the designs get sliced into HTML pages with fine tuned CSS to allow the site to work on every browser out there.
- Backend developers create databases to handle the complex site structure.
- The HTML pages are then hooked into a content management system so the client can manage the site.
- The user/client is invited to test the website out...
Uh Oh! we have a problem the assumptions we made at the start don't seem to work.
The user is confused about processes within the site.
What now? We can spend more time in IA, design, slice and development to get it right but the costs are high.
The solution. Iterative Design.
It's well known that it's nearly impossible to design a website that has no usability issues from the start.
Iterative design process allows design assumptions to be tested so problems can be discovered earlier.
The best description of Iterative design process is “…until you have actually built what you are designing, you are not going to be able to fully understand it.” Anders Ramsay
- Iterative design process allows
- Discovery of problems early on
- Reliable user feedback
- Less time documenting, more time designing
