Is there a process in web design?

Or is it just a list of things the clients want, put together by the team at the design agency, and suitably prettified in a way that they can justify it to the client?

Is it guided by reason and logic? By some accepted set of standards?

Agreed that web design is still a new industry but it has grown considerably in the last 12 years.  Today, it is a combination of many new disciplines.

• Graphic Design
• Technology – Client and Server side, CSS, Programming language, Databases, Content Management Systems, good ‘ol HTML, Javascript and a hundred variations of that
• Usability, User Interaction, User Testing
• Information Architecture
• Persuasion Architecture

But despite all this, there is a need for client and practitioner education.

Very often web designers, tend to go over board flaunting their artistic skills rather than approaching a site from the end-users perspective. Clients too get caught in this vortex.

Everyone involved, forgets that the web site’s goal is to sell, persuade, get people to register, download a document, fill in an enquiry, etc. Very often they get caught in self-fulfilling objectives.

Clients suffer from another set of problems.

• Many have fixed ideas on what the creative should be before the content is in place
• Many use competitive sites as rigid benchmarks that the agency cannot deviate from
• Many get taken in by animation that does little to communicate
• Most are clueless about the process and eager to jump the steps.
• Yet, many are just interested in the price, not the process, and worse not the results.

Which is why the subject of web design begs for a method.

One which, would serve all the constituents well. And the WWW does not disappoint us in this quest for wisdom.

WebDesignFromScratch is one of the better sites out there, which gives you a lowdown on the process of web design.

A wonderful helicopter view that would warm the cockles of clients and practitioners, alike.

Checkout Web Design From Scratch for more insights into this fascinating process of web design.