The Process
All of our design services use the following process to ensure that nothing is missed during the development process.
To be able to properly understand what your design and development needs are, we must go through a process called “discovery”. This involves communication with you regarding your needs and desires for your website or application. We often have clients fill out a Discovery Worksheet as a starting point; this worksheet asks questions about colors, other sites you like, what you would really like to see on the site, etc.
Once the worksheet has been filled, further communication is often needed, either over email or on the phone to clarify and finalize your needs.
Once we have determined your needs, a contract will be sent to you. Not only will this make clear what is expected of both you and our company, it will also define the following elements:
- Statement of Work: what specifically is included as far as work to be done
- Payment Amount and Schedule
- Time Schedule and Milestones
Having a clear contract protects both you and us, and prevents confusion in the future.
The initial part of the design process is the wireframing process. This involves very simple layout using black and white lines, to ensure that we have everything we want included on the pages of your website. This may often start with a simple sketch provided by yourselves, and go from there, or we can start the wireframes from scratch.
The next part of the design process is creating “comps” — these are full design images that will show almost exactly what your site or application will look like. It is important during this process that you provide speedy communication regarding your thoughts on the designs, or the entire process can get bogged down.
Once you have signed off on the design comps, actual development and programming begins. It’s important to understand that once you have signed off on design, changes to the appearance of the site should be minimal at this point. Make sure you get any changes, additions, etc. done during the design round, because it is far more difficult to implement them during the development change. Large or complicated changes outside of the scope of the original contract can incur further charges.
As the site is developed, you will be sent a link to the development version of the site on our servers. You will be able to fully test and try out the site during this time. We will also be testing to make certain that the site is working as expected in all browsers.
