Designing Preparation

The other night my girlfriend and I decided to paint our bedroom. While I was prepping the room it occurred to me how important preparation is to the completed project.

It was boring and took awhile, but all that hard work showed in the final results. For painting, if you take the time to tape off the room and make sure the lines are straight, the actual job of painting goes by fast. Then, when you remove the tape, the crisp lines make the final product look sharp. This is important in every design and sets you apart from others.

Getting ready for a new project entails research into the company, competitors and the market. Just like taping, research can be boring and time consuming, however when you fully understand who you are designing for, the final design looks sharp. Although many aspect of design are subjective, craft is not. So when you plan and execute well, it is hard to deny that it works.

When dealing specifically in Interactive design, preparation can be even more cumbersome. For example, after research there is additional planning using documents called wireframes that reveal the project's information architecture and help you overcome potential problems users may face. Building these documents take a lot of time in the beginning. This time will result in well executed products, just like painting.

The basic idea behind interactive preparation is to separate the tasks needing to be completed. Designing with colors and logos answers questions about hierarchy, branding and visual representation of the message. Preparing with wireframes and IA will help you answer the interaction, users tasks and site structure questions that are inherent in the interactive development process.

Compared to painting, it allows the lines to be crisp. A wireframe allows you to see the bigger picture of how the users path will unfold and help you create crisp paths to guide them through your project.

This is not unique to interactive. Preparation is a key aspect of most jobs and requires preparation to succeed. In construction the rule of thumb is always measure twice, cut once.  Take time to plan your projects and you will earn a reputation for delivering the best results, making time spent on preparation well worth the effort.