Our 4 Step Proven Design Process

Even simple projects can involve many issues. If you try to tackle everything at once it’s hard to manage and less cost effective. Many times people want to jump into the visual design first because that’s the “fun” part.

No matter what platform your project is living on, a clear process that breaks it down into concrete steps helps everyone stay on track. Here’s an easy-to-understand process for managing interactive projects.

1. DISCOVER
An exploration of the company, the brand, the target audience, and the competition.

  • Brainstorm
    Meet to gather ideas and determine project scope. Ask questions. What’s working? What’s not? What must stay in? What could be left out? What could we add that would make it great?
  • Persona Creation/Target Users
    Create or review existing user personas, testing results, and interaction paths to understand the user goals.
  • Research
    Look at competitors and/or other websites to evaluate other features that should be considered or avoided.
  • Brand Attributes
    Come up with words that define the brand and theme such as “Friendly”, “Inspiring”, “Trusted”, “Entertaining”, and so forth. Ten to twenty words give you a good basis for going forward.

2. DEVELOP
Based on the discovery, wireframes are developed to provide a blueprint for the site.

  • Wireframes
    Info from brainstorming is organized into sensible units that are shared with stakeholders for feedback and approval to move forward.
  • User testing 
    Getting actual users to test the site. Extremely valuable at all stages of the process. 

3. DESIGN
Wireframes form the basis for a responsive, fully-functional, interactive experience.

  • Comps of look and feel
    Rough sketches, more detailed page layouts, static visuals of interface and/or prototypes with working functionality.
  • Stakeholder feedback
    Record feedback from all team members plus results of user testing.
  • Finalize look and feel
    Integrate feedback into a complete design.

4. DEPLOY!
Assets are delivered to programmers for implementation. After launch, experience should be tested and evaluated using analytics and user testing. Further iterations should be based on these performance results.

  • Assemble assets
    Content and images formatted depending on usage.
  • Post test site for review
    Proof site for accuracy, spelling, links, etc.
  • Launch
    Post site live, track results, test with users, evaluate and make improvements as needed.