Analyze this!

You are at the beggining of a new project. You are excited. You are about to dig into the design phase. Wait a minute. No project is as clear as it looks.

It is always difficult for me to explain to my students why they should begin by using pen and paper. Probably because neither I used to believe in analyzing a project. However you need to break it down.

Let us say you are at the beginning of new website. For me it is more important to decompose the parameters which have to do with what you want to achieve with this website. Not the design. The design analysis comes next and most of the times it has been already set by the requirements of the project.

Have you heard about the Dont’t make me think book? This excellent book explains why we, the designers, should care most about how to make our users’ life easier. So if you really need to make your users register in a website, tell them so! Show them the way how to do it and if it is possible don’t let them click more than once (when they push the Submit button). In this case apparently you are going to have the Register Form at the frontpage of your website.

You see now? Part of the design phase has been set automatically. You are going to save a region in the front page which will hold the form. Do you need to have this form always visible? Prepare to place it in a second column of your website which will remain the same (or at least part of it) everywhere.

Without proper analyzing before the design you would probably miss the importance of this form. Each project hold its own goals which they should be achieved. Learn how to deal with them in the first place.