Well, I apologize for just now sitting down and doing this. I totally forgot about commenting until I was in the middle of my run this evening…whoops. I read the article in class last week, and didn’t finish up my comments. I will do better from here on out…promise.
In Doug Bowman’s “A Design Process Revealed,” he takes his reader through his design process to develop a webpage to appear in the CSS Zen Garden. Bowman’s design process is really pretty typical of most institutionally-trained designers. This process that Bowman explains is an 8 step process that begins with Research and Discovery and steps through until the conclusion with the Execution & Implementation phase.
I particularly agreed with Bowman defining Competitive Analysis as a step in the process. Although, I most of the time, research current trends pertaining to a particular project, it was eye-opening to see it defined and given importance. Most of the time, I clump it in with the Research & Discovery phase, but after reading Bowman’s article I will consciously appropriate time doing Competitive Analyses.
Like many of the computer generation, thumbnails for me is often a step I would prefer to skip. However, I do believe that projects who start in thumbnail form end as the better projects. I particularly believe that thumbnails are important in web-design so that you can work through your ideas before you tackle the CSS of the page–especially for me whose CSS is rustier than the Tin Man in Wizard of Oz.
Although, I didn’t think that the article had many new ideas that we haven’t discussed in previous classes, I really feel that it is important to revisit the design process every now and again so that we can continue to develop fresh and new designs.
