Organizational principles in website design

This article is a logical continuation of a recent article: Serious design of serious sites . We again share our experience in designing large sites. This time I want to talk about the principles of building the design process itself, because a lot also depends on the process itself.

There are a number of principles that must be used when designing websites.

1. Original ideas. Ideas will be the basis of design. This is the most important start of the whole project. It is very important not to make copies of already existing projects, almost always the task is to do better than any direct or indirect competitor. And it is better by several orders of magnitude, otherwise it will not be possible to lure the target audience from those sites where it already lives. Ideas should be generated by both the designer and the project initiator, the very carrier of the main idea.
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2. We transfer offlain experience. One of the most important principles of successful design is to transfer experience from offline to online. You need to imagine yourself in the place of a representative of the target audience, think about how he meets his needs related to the subject of the project offline, and do the same, only better, online. To illustrate the principle, let's imagine that we are designing a social network of car enthusiasts, where a typical representative of the target audience has a car, buys car parts in a shop near the house, communicates with a friend Vasya from a nearby garage. Understanding the behavior of our potential user offline, we can immediately suggest that he: bind the car to a profile by VIN number with a detailed reference book about it; make a certain analogue of the car market with different sellers, the ability to compare prices, feedback on the work; community of owners of the same cars, with each of which you can talk, etc. These are small ideas that came to my mind literally on the go, I just presented myself at the site of a potential user. In just a couple of minutes, you can create a few dozen good, and most importantly, useful ideas.
   
   
3. Stage development. At the very beginning, an idea is born, as a rule, very simple in appearance, but the more we begin to think it through, the more we understand that this is only the tip of the iceberg. Constantly I want to add “this one more thing” or something “to do better”. Whoever designed at least once knows that there is no limit to perfection: you can always improve and polish an idea and never run a project. Therefore, an important rule: select the core of the project, a certain basic functionality around the main idea, design it, and write the rest into the following steps, which will be implemented after the release of the beta version of the project. There are also flexible methodologies that provide for the release of the most basic functionality without add-ons at all, and then its continuous improvement.
   
   
4. Do not hurry. Very often, in the midst of design, one would like to begin the following stages: design, layout, programming ... This is a very frequent and very serious mistake. When designing, you can add an idea in an hour, a design change for this task may take a day, and it will take a month to change the program code. Therefore, it is categorically impossible to begin the subsequent stages without an approved design stage, this is fraught with delay in terms of budget increases and a decrease in quality.
   
   
5. Everything needs to be fixed. Ideas will be born constantly: in the workplace, in transport, at a holiday ... anywhere! All you need to immediately write, always carry a notebook or any electronic device with you and write down absolutely all ideas. It's like a brainstorming principle - first you need to write down all the ideas, and then choose the best ones. If I get involved in a project, ideas may come to me even at night, it happens that I wake up in the middle of the night, turn on the computer and start recording. In addition, you need to fix everything when working with the client: during the design process, everything will change and be forgotten ten times, therefore it is impossible to work without fixing.
   
   
6. Close communication with the initiator of the project. For the ultimate success of the project, it is extremely important to constantly interact with the project initiator at all design stages, starting with studying the target audience and ending with the final approval of the TOR. It is a symbiosis of the designer and the customer that will lead to maximum quality.
   
   
7. Design is only the first stage. It is important to remember that designing is only the first stage of project creation, which means that designers, layout designers, programmers, testers and other specialists will use the results of the designer’s work, therefore the result of this phase should be a complete and unambiguous terms of reference. other participants in the production process.
   
   
8. Confidentiality. Many investors like to say that an idea in itself is worth nothing. Perhaps it is. But, nevertheless, good ideas are not lying on the road, so you should not publicly tell everyone your ideas until the project is implemented. The value of an idea is not in value, but in potential. You can only show that has no value.
   
   
9. The concept is not TK. Many for some reason believe that it is enough to write a text description of the idea (concept), and this will be quite enough to begin the design and programming. This is a big misconception. The concept is not a technical task yet, it is IMPOSSIBLE to work on design and, moreover, programming, without interface prototypes and business logic. For large projects, it may well contain hundreds of interface prototypes and as much text.
   
   
10. Be patient. Designing a complex thing, a great responsibility and in time it all happens not quickly. It is important to understand that designing a serious website takes from 1 to 3 months of work of an experienced designer, and some projects can be designed even more.
    
    

I realized all these principles with experience, working on dozens of different projects. This is not a theory from the book, this is my personal bare experience. It should not be taken as an instruction, it is worth pondering why these principles I wrote out, and what their violation could lead to.

PS Very soon the course starts in our business school Digitov: Designing serious sites . Subscribe to the course now and you can buy it at a discount.