Stage – 1: Requirement Gathering:
The requirement gathering is the critical phase to extract the project information from the client in a systematic way. A requirement gathering for design is entirely different than for requirement gathering for development. Here the discussion will be mainly based on four important dimensions i.e. Objective, Content, Design & Usability. Whereas in development it is Technology, Database, and Business Orientation.
Objective
Objective defines the business objective of a solution developed. A designer must know why the design is being made for. The project could be Air Travel Site, Real Estate Directory, Vacation Portal, Education Portal, Database Management Application, Stock Market Information Tool, or just a company website. A clear objective helps designer to visualize the future design & progress plan of the project.
Content
Content defines the potential or nature of any project. It might be a tourism information site, education portal, online stock broking portal, gaming portal, database management application etc;. Content is what drives the design process to the next level. And it is the scarcity in most project because a client comes with a business concept, but not content.
Content are classified into many types such as business inputs, complete project information, viewable contents like, logo, text, images, input fields and other multimedia objects. A designer’s job to integrate these contents into one aesthetically looking application.
With few very simple words we can define content as source, foundation, skeleton or wireframe structure for any design project.
Design:
Design is the next process derived after collecting enough resources like contents. Design is entirely a creative process. A designer before initiating design work should know the following:
- Type of project
- Organization type
- Target audiences
- Specific design guidelines/specifications from the client
- Technology
Usability:
Usability is defined as simplicity to experience an application. Usability is combination of physical and psychological consideration. Usability mainly consists of readability, accessibility & findability. Following features are very important to define usability for a site:
- Content priority
- Media type (static/animated)
- Device Type (PC/PDA)
- Key input operation (Mouse/Keyboard/Touchscreen/Hybrid)
CUi 