Inside Designer’s Mind – 100 things that designer considers before designing

Yes, this is an continuation to my previous article “Inside Designer’s Mind – Understanding a designer”. This article tells you what amount of plan actually takes to make a perfect design especially Web UI Design. Below compilations are from own & team work experience and doesn’t belong to any book.

Here lists about 100 things that designer considers before, while and even after designing(hope, at least you’ve enough patience to hover your eyes over these points) and list is partial:

Requirement gathering stage:

1. Is it a website / web application?
2. What is the business of the client?
3. Which industry the business belongs to?
4. Why the client needs a website /design solution?
5. Who are clients competitors?
6. What are competitors websites?
7. Is market ready to use the product / service offered by the client?
8. Is the product / service already exists in the market from other competitor?
9. Does this website really going to help to improve clients business & business goals?
10. What are the primary, secondary & tertiary target audiences?
11. Which part of the website is most useful to the users?
12. What are the clients corporate color scheme and clients expected color scheme apart from corporate colors?
13. What is the content priority?
14. What are the content types?
15. What category the project belongs to? Is it e-commerce / travel / education / banking etc;
16. Is all content of the screen displayed are dynamic or part of it?
17. Does the websites requires photographs to be shot from a model/photography agency or can it be obtained from a Photo Stock Library?
18. Does contents of websites includes streaming audio & video?
19. What media website need to be done? Is it Web(HTML) / Flash ?
20. If web, which technology to use? Is it Java / .NET / PHP / Other?
21. If flash, what should be the flash version? Is it Flash Player 6.0 / Flash Player 7.0 / Flash Player 8.0 /Flash Player 9.0?
22. What are the target internet browsers and their versions? Is it IE6.0 / IE7.0 / Firefox 1.0 / Firefox 1.5 / Firefox 2.0 / NN6.0 / NN7.0 / NN8.0 / Opera 8.0 / Opera 9.0 / Safari 3.0 or All?
23. Does these pages needs to be customized for mobile / PDA devices?
24. What is the time provided to complete whole project?
25. What is the time provided to do Graphic Design & UI prototyping for the website?
26. Is the time provided optimum / sufficient?

    Visualization stage:

27. Which design theme best suits clients requirement? Is it Elegant Simplicity / Complex Graphical / Enigma / Feminine etc;
28. Is this to be very creative / funky / serious / artistic / weird in nature.
29. Does it requires initial intro animation before start?
30. Is it a good idea to use a background music while browsing through pages?
31. What should be the frequency of use of given color scheme?
32. What are the color priority?
33. Should I include a sense of flavor of art into design?
34. Doing market research to understand the End-User.
35. Is it helpful collect Ad-Samples of the product to understand the message to consumer?
36. How about integrating some of the Ad concepts in design?
37. Whether to maintaining more graphics less text message or more text content and less graphics.
38. Collecting inspirational resources from the competitors Ad campaign/other websites of same industry/Black Book etc;
39. Is the person reviewing the design a professional design/art critic?

    Information Architecture and Information Flow stage:

40. How many sections does the website contains? and What are those?
41. Define navigation priority?
42. Navigation type: Menu based, Tabbed, Simple text links etc;
43. Is the text content given needs to be refined from an copy/content/technical writer?
44. Is the content of the website needs to be cached & searchable from search engines?

    Graphic Design / Visual Design stage:
    Many of consideration comes between Visualization & Actual Visual Design Process is numerous & sometimes undefinable. In actual Visualization & Visual Design is a parallel process, which is cyclic and interdependent.

45. Which tool to use for creation of layout? Is it Photoshop / Illustrator / Flash / CorelDraw etc;
46. Is the design being made is for all screen resolution or fixed screen size?
47. Does provided color scheme suits browser color output capability?
48. Is it a part of Web 216 color palette?
49. Do I need to create website / product logo or will the client provide it?
50. To use graphical buttons or simple buttons.
51. Background color standard white / black / pale color shades / tiled image.
52. Quantity of images/graphics/videos in the page maintain aesthetic look & performance.
53. Either to use multiple colors or standard set of colors to suit the flavor.
54. Whether to use art bits, brush strokes & pastels.
55. Is the fonts used will be present in the user’s machine?
56. Is it better to use system/device/standard Windows/MAC fonts?
57. If non-system fonts used, how to embed them? Is it with WEFT3.0 for IE or Flash Font Embedding Technique for all browsers.
58. Will the menu of the site be a of static/straight movement or slightly animated/delayed?
59. Does the page requires to avoid scroll vertically on standard resolution or let it scroll.
60. Is the Graphic Design in making can be easily prototyped for Web based / Flash based applications.
61. Does it conclude linearity of design so that it can well sliced and distributed among the page without mis-alignments and breaks.
62. Whether is it require to refine the design to eliminate unwanted contents and add more useful items.
63. Is this design matches current design trends or is it a Out-Of-Box concept which has never been tried before.
64. Could this design be a trend-setter.
65. Did client really liked the design mock-up. If not what necessary changes/iterations can be made to pull the design to development phase.
    
    Prototyping stage:
66. In which format prototype has to be developed. Is it flash / web.
67. If web, which version of HTML to use? Is it XHTML, HTML4.01 or HTML3.0.
68. If flash, which version of Flash Development tool to use? Is it Flash MX 2004 Professional, Flash 8 Professional, Adobe Flash CS3 Professional etc;
69. Which prototyping tool to use for web? Is it Dreamveaver, Frontpage or GoLive etc;
70. What should be the DTD of the HTML? Is it Loose, Strict or Transitional.
71. Which scripting language to choose? Is it JavaScript or VB Script or both.
72. Since VB Script doesn’t work in NN & Firefox, I should go for JavaScript.
73. Whether to use Table based layout or DIV based layout?
74. Table based are simple, but take lot of code to build and DIV needs to controlled totally through CSS.
75. Is the prototype is well suitable to be used directly for development.
76. If the application is going to be developed using .NET Technology. The table grid structure has to be well planned & CSS to be made accurately to impart same output when rendered as ASP.NET web application.
77. In CSS each class category has to be well commented for proper understanding for developers.
78. In prototype pages, all the pages which have undergone changes has to be commented by the Designer with his name, date & time.
79. Images from the template mockup has to be well sliced, and should be used minimally. Any pain color has to be replaced with HTML / CSS color code for increased performance.
80. While working with photographs it’s highly advisable to use JPEG images for it’s size optimizing capability.
81. While working on web graphics it’s highly advised to use GIF image.
82. If the image needs to be more transparent and have to be used in both web & flash, PNG preferred.
83. To keep all the file categories like image, flash, CSS, JavaScript, XML etc; as separate folders for effective product management & following standards.
84. Whether to use or avoid Active X components in page.
85. Whether to use Java plug-ins for mini applications or use flash applications.
86. Does the page scroll at planned minimum screen resolution like 800 x 600. If it scrolls hot to fix it without affecting whole design.

    Testing stage:

87. Is the XHTML/HTML code is written as per the standards defined by W3C.
88. Is the CSS code is written as per the standards defined by W3C.
89. Is the JavaScript code is written as per the standards defined by ECMA Organization.
90. Is there any JavaScript error appearing on any of actions like onclick, onload, onchange etc;
91. Is the page confirms usability & accessibility standards set by WAI.
92. Is the page confirms usability & accessibility standards set by US Federal Section 508.
93. Is all pages are linked well. Is there any broken links. If broken how to fix it, manually or using any other tool.
94. What is the time required to load the page at speeds like DSL, 56K, 28.8 & 14.4 bandwidth respectively?
95. Is the page loading inconsistent where components are loading individually at different speed.
96. Is load priority in symmetry?
97. Have I got a positive results while doing End-User testing with Student, Professionals & housewives.
98. How usable the information & navigation to the End-User. Could he/she be able to find the information he/she’s looking for?

    Post Deployment stage:

99. Did the design compelled user to make any financial transaction through the site.
100. Did the client received good business response through the site/solution and Did the site made good business out of it.

Inside Designer’s Mind – Understanding a designer from a Leadership Standpoint

“Oh! I heard you are a designer, graphic designer right?. You seem to draw lines, boxes & circles and fill colors to them, isn’t it?. Yeah! it’s very simple yaar”. This is what one of my old friend whom I met in Bangalore told me. It’s quite common to see these kind of responses everywhere.

A designer in an IT Company:

It’s not only a common man, but many doesn’t understand the process of design even in an IT company. Reason being they are not into making designs like Ad Agencies and Design Studios. They only need designs to make the software applications look aesthetic & appealing.

A formula for successful design lies here:

Clear Requirement/Objective + Freedom + Optimum Time = Creative(innovative) & Productive Output

This formula not only for design but also implies for many professions which needs creativity. Sadly one or more of this are in scarcity in many organizations/processes.

In a typical IT company, designer has to visualize a design for 6 intended audiences in layers, they are:

1. Creative Lead – Supervises and approves the design task
2. Project Manager – Supervises and approves the project
3. Client Delivery Head / Director (Optional sometimes) – Approves the project & delivers it to the client.
4. Client – Organization / person who’s taken project from another organization / person to get it done offshore(India/China).
5. Client’s Client / Client’s Customer – Organization / person who needs solution / product / service done
6. End-User – People for whom product/solution addressed for and are often considered optional.

Satisfying all of them will only make a design concept successful. Many times it happens like you make a perfect design that suits end user requirement, but your manager reject it at first stage saying the color scheme he personally didn’t liked. Don’t you call a designer a genius who works in this complex type of setup. By the time a design passes through all these layers and reaches End-User, this has gone for numerous iterations and changes after which the primary objective what a designer has tailored would’ve gone for a toss.

Common issues while working with Non-Creative Managers:

It’s quite common in any IT company that a designer will be directly reporting to manager of a project. One will not get a person to work under whom is actually into design/creative industry like Advertising & Design Studio. Here manager is from a software development background which means non-creative. Even sometimes, one will get a chance to get to work under creative project managers, but it depends from organization to organization and from projects to projects. The common issues are:

1. He will not be given enough requirement & contents before starting design
2. He will be usually told to do a design initially so that it can be changed later entirely
3. Even sometimes one will be told that to “Do something”.
4. If you have a great idea, you feel it’s going make a difference and your manager doesn’t understand it. It’s a waste.
5. There is no Out-Of-Box concept. If it’s there, ask your manager which Box.
6. Creative independence & creative risk are the terms your manager doesn’t understand. If you use it, they’ll think you are making a show-off.
7. Luckily color schemes are usually given, unfortunately are of bad combinations. Sometimes no color will be given and told to do either in Light color or Dark color. As per design principle, a good design will be a combination of suitable light & dark color contrasts.
8. Task schedule will be given only for the design task execution. Time for planning, research, visualizing etc; are not included in schedule.
9. If you are sitting quiet, sketching and visualizing your upcoming design, you are wasting your time in thinking something stupid. It’s preferred that you do design first and think later.
10. Designers’ are usually thought as different type of developers(software engineers).
11. A “UI Prototype Design” are usually called as “Prototype Code”.
12. Most of creative websites are blocked through network firewall. Because they consume lots of internet bandwidth.
13. You will be emphasized on your efficiency in how you can use the tool rather than what best you can do using that tool.
14. In their knowledge, “Creativity” only means ability to match & play with colors. Knowledge of Art, Aesthetics, Flavours, Typography, Photography, Trend etc; are considered as something “special” and not needed.

What designer wants?

1. Like above formula, provide clear requirement. Requirement for designer is entirely different than a requirement for a developer(Software Engineer). Both types of requirements(creative & functional) are needed to plan navigation along with visual design.
2. Freedom on work provides passion on work, which leads to innovation and also gives a sense of ownership. Once a great man said “When passion and skills are put together, expect a masterpiece”.
3. Providing optimum time will make him plan, research, visualize, and execute task efficiently. If stringent time is given one or many of them may suffer.
4. Avoid multiple iterations on a single design. Because a designer will sketch a aesthetic design for the intended user at initial stage itself. Each change will actually deviate the design from its initial appeal. Sometimes these iterations let the design refine to the user & client needs. At most times it ruins.
5. Providing all required primary & secondary tools to make an “idea” into “reality” efficiently. For example “Adobe Photoshop” as primary tool and “KPT”, “Alien Skin” and other third party applications as secondary tools.
6. Kindly consider them as special species. If they have a better way to doing things, let them do. Don’t avoid them since you don’t know about it. May be its worth to take risk.