Last week I talked about How to Hire a Web Designer , today lets tackle what to expect and how to work with your web site designer during the design phase of a project.
What to expect
- Your designer will create a look and feel of key pages of the site and you will be presented with jpegs of these pages. Nothing will be “clickable” at this stage.
- The site will most likely be populated with Lorem Ipsum. This is because the designer needs you to concentrate on the graphical elements and layout of the site and not get bogged down in copy.
- The design phase is a very collaborative phase, expect a few rendition of a design based on feedback you give.
- You will be given a time frame in which to critique. Imperative to keep your project delivery date on target.
How to Evaluate
- How do you feel about the overall look and feel?
- Does the color palette work for you?
- How about the white space?
- Are there intuitive navigational elements
- Are there obvious call to actions?
- To what element of the design is your eye drawn?
Giving Feedback
Don’t be afraid to be brutally honest in your feedback. If the design is not working for you on any level it is much better to be upfront. However a simple “I don’t like it” is no help. Your designer needs to understand what it is about the design that is “not floating your boat” and will help guide your evaluation process to fix on the elements that need to be addressed. For example, imagine you have a real aversion to the color purple and the inclusion of a purple element is causing “tunnel vision” Sometime just tweaking the color palette of a design can have the effect of ” I don’t like it” to “I love it”.
In short being able to articulate your likes and dislikes will ensure you end up with a design you absolutely love.
Signing Off
Once your designer produces the “winning” design” you will be asked to sign off on the design. Making drastic design changes after this point can effect the coding efforts during the next stage of the project and typically incur additional costs.
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