Allchorn Blog

I found out how to do this and thought it would be nice to share. So simple, if you didn’t know you’ll kick yourself

Untitled from Ross Allchorn on Vimeo.

I’m in a position at the moment where I’m frantically writing training material for the web design course I’m teaching next year at Hirt & Carter… and at the same time, I’m working on my own business and it’s marketing and procedures.

One thing I’ve been looking into quite a bit lately is the lifecycle of a website project. That being the initial discussion with the client, all the way through to publishing the site live for the consumer. I’ve written a lifecycle based on the waterfall method of development, which while not always ideal, it has it’s pros. One of them being an easier way of keeping things on budget and time.

The main sections I came up with were:

• Initial Discussions
  From the first phone call/email to signing a contract and cost/time estimate.
• Pre-production
  Researching and spec document creation through to information architecture.
• Production
  Design, development & testing.
• Post Production
  Content insertion, focus group testing, snaglists, final tests & fixes through to launch.

You can view the full document here.

WordPress 2.7 Beta Release Candidate 1 from Ross Allchorn on Vimeo.

With all this talk of Agile Design and moving straight to HTML/CSS before even touching Photoshop, I’m actually quite interested in creating a design and site from the ground up beginning with code. I’m not saying I won’t be using a graphics editor, but I want the frilly aesthetics to be of secondary concern.

Lots of people disagree with this method, and I’m sure it won’t suit every design requirement. Just thinking out loud, I will most certainly do pencil sketches before going to code, but that will only serve to ascertain the rough layout.

What I envision the benefit of this method will be is that the content will become of primary importance. Certain elements like form widgets will be easier to mockup and you can give your client a user experience workflow demonstration much earlier in the project. We all know that the client is a visual being (on the most part).

I’m sure there will be hickups, but I think it’s worth a bash and I’ll push for my next project to be done in this manner. Perhaps if the client does not have a CI, I can reconsider and hold off, but if it’s an established brand, it will be an interesting exercise.