When I build a piece of Ikea furniture I get all the parts out its box and arrange them in piles. I then get the instructions and scheme over them to get a clue on where to start and how it should progress. So far everything is good…
I then put the instructions down and start to build. I beast into the work and get the dowel joints hammered in and soon I am finished but then I find an extra piece so I pick up the instructions again and try to figure out where it should have went and if it is really needed.
This is a dangerous way to work. As you might find at 2am one Monday morning, when you get a rude awakening when the flat pack bed you just built has collapsed on top of you because you snored a little too loudly meaning you have to sleep on the couch that night and build it properly the next day or be forced to buy a new one.
Does this sound familiar?
Well this is the same when designing a website often at the start of the process we develop a design brief to get out all the ideas and arrange them and to figure out how the task will progress. Many designers often fall into the trap of not looking at it again until the project is finished to check if we have ticked all the boxes.
My advice is to continually refer to the design brief and the goals you are trying to achieve for every element of the site. Always have a purpose for doing what you are doing and most importantly make sure that you don’t leave anything out and then try to squeeze it in at the end. If you do this too often you will end up with a mess and a headboard on top of your head in the middle of the night and although you might be annoyed wait to you see the steam coming out of your partners ears. If you don’t the same when developing a site it will be your client and their customers that will be doing their best impression of a boiled kettle.
About Timothy McGraw
I am a UX designer, front-end developer and owner of Design Scientifc. With a keen eye for detail I care not only how products look but also how they work. User experience has become a passion, and users are at center of each of the projects I am part of. I am obsessed with web standards and accessibility, so much so that I love clean semantic code. I write about anything web related but mostly UX.