Visual Design and Content Organization (Info Design)

We then develop both the look of your site, and how it will be organized.

This phase has two parallel goals:

• To define and document the Visual Design of the site, including graphics, layout, colors, fonts etc. to the extent possible and practical.   After discussing and "sketching" various ideas and sending you drafts, we arrive at roughly an 80-90% finalized version.  This lets us move on to building the site and allows for minor modifications that may arise out of the the Production and Publishing phases (below).  For example, seeing how the real content actually looks laid-out, there might be a minor adjustment in layout, etc.
• To define and document the Content Organization (aka, "Info Design") of the site, including  how the site is organized, how content is grouped and presented on menus, submenus, etc., to the extent possible and practical.  There are usually many ways to group and pressent the information on your site, each with different advantages and effects on your user.   Again the goal is to be roughly 80-90% clear on how things will be organized, allowing for some modifications later.

These two goals are quite interwoven in some obvious ways.  For example, if we decide that you actually need as many as seven top-level menu items, its best to choose a vertical layout so there is room to expand downwards were there might not be room horizantally.

There are usually three main iterations of the Visual Design, that allow us to narrow the design and allows you to give detailed feedback on all aspects of the layout and appearance.  The idea is that we make a good faith effort to progressively narrow and define the direction and avoid significant changes later in the process.  Significant changes late in the process are difficult for everyone, and in some extreme cases I might actually charge you for the additional work.

Dudring this process, I'm coaching you on the Info design and encouraging you to begin collecting and editing the content that will eventually be published on the site.  This often takes more effort and energy than it appears on your part, and its good to start the process early, will I'm making your site.

This phase is can take from 1-4 weeks roughly, depending on the complexity of the issues involved, how clear your idea of the site is originally, and other factors.