Design & development is often thought to be at odds with each other. Jeff Veen and Erika Hall say designers and developers should be running together towards the same goals. In their experience, often there is a thin distinction between the two. Considering design from a problem solving methodology point of view, it is very important consider following influences:

• Optimization v/s Innovation
• Establishing goals & priorities
• Starting the design process
• Players in the design process
• Common Pitfall

Free TV : Ustream

Implementing a qualitative and a quantitative process can achieve optimization. However, innovation isn’t necessarily a panacea for sizzling up your design. It may be better to improve and iterate over an older process rather than trying a completely new idea. Lot of thought goes into innovation, case in point being Google search interface.

Establishing clear goals, allows you to stay focused and not get distracted as you iterate.

An early prototype is good enough to get started, however it is important to understand that an early decision on design should incorporate the sentiment that your site needs to convey. For e.g. Mint, as a financial services website, needs to convey a sense of security and needs to be present from the get go.

Visual designers, interaction designers, information architects, writer and front-end developer are all part of the design process and have a important role to play. A good methodology is to sit down, perhaps in a simple whiteboard session, capture all ideas and send snapshot around for comments. Having detailed documentation is great, but may often be unnecessary unless you have a geographically dispersed team. Documentation should be minimal and should be a record of the discussion on decisions made.

A common pitfall is to fall prey to subjectivity. How does ‘orange’ sound? Subjectivity is extremely hard to debug.

Heard enough yet? Join us at Startonomics