Case Study: Launching A Web Product – Design

I recently talked about my personal startup that I have begun working on. I talked about how to come up with ideas and to act on them, and promised you that I would tell you a little bit more about the design process.

I’ve been working on the design for a few days now and a lot of things have been coming up simultaneously, which is a good thing, so I’ve been busy. Which brings me to the most important rule about design. Focus.

Focused Design

Working multiple jobs at once, with each one having different needs, can get quite distracting. You need to keep taking your creativity to various levels of output while maintaining focus for the project you are presently on.

One project needs to be totally toned down and pleasant, while the other one needs you to make it all fresh and splashy. I usually adapt to these situations by dividing myself between projects as below -

• In the day time I will tackle the fresh and splashy client as I’m more hyper at that time.
• After lunch, I come back with a more relaxed frame of mind and fix up whatever extremities I may have put down before. To make the design more usable and intuitive.
• As the afternoon progresses my mind is getting more relaxed so I shift myself over to the more serious type of client who wants it as simple as it can get. Simplicity is easier to achieve if you are relaxed and usually it turns out looking good that way.

I may also jump in between projects here and there if I get sparks of inspiration, which does tend to happen. Usually when I look at it the next day I get more ideas on how to make an element better. So if you ever get a creative spark at any point of time, put pen to paper {or mouse to pad} and get going.

Visualize your design

Before I put anything down on paper, or photoshop, I visualize every possible style I can in my head for a new job. Watching hundreds of websites over the years has left me with an imprinted digital library in my head of various styles, colors, patterns etc… Sometimes I remember a website only because it had a certain look to it, rather than what it said. Beauty doesn’t always have brains {Ali ducks from all the stuff being thrown at him}. What I mean is that even if you have the best looking design, doesn’t mean your content is on par with it. Sad but true.

So for my new project I thought of every which way a start page, landing page and home page have been done. I settled to show it for a 1024 X 768 resolution. I am also going to make it a combination of all three types of pages mentioned above, as it needs to serve that purpose.

Simplicity always wins

Without overloading a new user with too much information I want the home page to convey just enough information to them so they can take an action in the quickest amount of time possible. Roughly 5 – 20 seconds in internet time today.

I decided to go with a two column design. One column for the menu, the other to describe the two main actions that they will be able to perform on the site. I also designed it so that a user would not have to scroll down to view additional information.

Give it some gradients, some shine and now I have a basic idea to work with. Cool, time to fine tune it. I’ll leave that for a later post, plus give you a glimpse of the colors I’ve finally settled on. Maybe even a little snapshot.

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