A Typical Design Process
- Research
- Content
- UX Design
- Feedback
- Visuial Design
- Feedback
- Development
- Feedback
- Delivery
This is a typical design process by IT programmers or website designers. It is good and has been proven in real practice. If you hire designers to develop a website for you, this is pretty much the process you're going to experience.
You can also observe that there are a few focuses which are important:
| Content | The type of information especially text to be presented |
| UX Design | User experience is how users feel when they access the website, which includes the overall feeling, user interface, presentation, page & layout, easy operation, etc. |
| Visual Design | The appearance whether it is attractive, eye-catching and looking nice, which mainly focus on graphics, page and layout designs. |
You can also observe there are a few feedbacks which represents some of the milestones, which basically an acceptance of the work stage before going on to the next one
As far as the programmers or designers are concerned, this is pretty reasonable and necessary. However, this is absolutely not user-friendly enough to the website owners. We need to understand that the entire website design process is also a very time-consuming and therefore costly process. At least 1 or 2 programmers or designers has to work with their clients. Each site or each individual client has their own thoughts. A visible sample or prototype is required for the clients to compare and make decisions, yet not counting additional alterations. The time cost becomes very significant to have the job completed.
Yet the milestone acceptances becomes critical. If the clients change their minds, everything worked out prior to that will become meaningless, and everything needs to be restarted again regardless of the time spent. Sometimes, when a client always change their mind which is totally possible, the project can last as long as it can. Obviously budget is always a constraint. Clients will never be willing to pay for the time-cost lost because of this but these are actual costs incurred.
On the other hand, it is very common that the clients do not have a design experience, and do not have the visibility of how the final piece of work looks like. Without a proper visibility, the clients cannot see the final outcomes even though they have seen and accepted the work in individual pieces. This does not even counting the fact that people's mind always change.
It is not difficult to understand now the challenges in a project between the clients and the designers working together on a website.
This KHub+ system marks its advantages in such situations. With a short training, clients can design their websites in a DIY manner and no coding is necessary. Bypassing the technical barrier, clients can focus on their own content and page design. Yet the most critical importance is, they can regret what they have designed, and make changes of their own even though it is a minor one.
This KHub+ system makes it possible because it is an enterprise grade yet open-source content management system with focused design to facilitate content creators with effortless no-coding features including page layouts.
The Reality & Challenges
Most novice users do not really understand the challenges in building a website. They see what is visualized but they cannot see the process behind to make things happens. In reality, the efforts paid behind the scene are where all the costs are involved.
| Technical knowledge | The web technologies involved requires experienced professionals. It is mainly time-based labour cost and therefore it is expensive both to the designers and the clients. Not even counting the lack of such engineers in general in most every markets in the world. |
| Designer experience | A proper website requires experienced designers on the overall, page, layout and graphic designs. Design is a special talent. An engineer is not necessarily a designer, and vice versa. They have different mindsets, methodology and they use different tools. This means a different and costly time-based labour cost. On top of it, user experience is yet another relatively new type of design which is important too. |
| Content preparation | Content creation is actually not as easy as most people think, especially on websites where ideas are normally presented in a shortest possible and brief manner but expecting users not only to understand but also to generate a proper feeling and achieve the business objective. Simply look around how many people around us are writers. |
| Mind changes and visualization |
Clients change their minds easily not merely because they want to, it is also because they cannot visualize the whole picture before it is finished. On top of it, things can look perfect when it is an individual piece, but doesn't necessary match whent they all come together. As a matter of fact, we must accept the fact that sometimes we really changes our minds because we think they are important. In general, IT project deliveries are in months, and even milestone stages in weeks. Clients cannot really clarify any discrepancies before it is visualized but efforts already paid. Furthermore, requirements may change within the months due to business changes. |
| Fragmentation in thinking & continuity of thoughts | It is not uncommon nowadays that clients can only visualize how the next step be run before the previous step is visualized and experienced. The monthly completion schedule results in discontinuation of the thinking process after months. |
Content Creation & Content Structure
The values of a website comes from its content, not from its technology. Ultimately it is the content that matters for users. This is same for a website as well as a knowledge management portal, which was the primary design of KHub+, which is basically a type of content management system. It is a enterprise-based open-source design.
A good content management system should be one which well satisfy all needs of creation by content creators. The fact is, when technical knowledge is a requirement for content creators, it will also be a limitation of the content that can be, and should be created.
Creating content of a website for an organization is often required to inspire the existing or potential customers for actions towards your business goals. It requires good understanding of the customers, the market segment as well as the product, services and experiences of existing customers. On top you need the proper skills to make it eye-catching and attractive, mind-blowing and if possible action-triggering. External 3rd parties or staff in general are not the right people to deliver such results. Yet these right people might not necessarily have the right technical knowledge to create the right content. With these in background, the following means a lot in
| No Coding | When technical knowledge is no longer a barrier, clients focus in content creation. In addition, it becomes much more efficient in terms of productivity in content creation when no coding is necessary. |
| Content Structure |
Professional writers will understand the importance of presenting content in a proper structure such as columns, pairing of graphics & text, on-demand information, effective in-page structure which fits much better for catching customers' mind. This KHub+ provides a lot of in-page structures without the need of complicated coding. |
Mind Changing is no longer prohibited
The built-in flexibility of page structure allows content creators to go back any time and make modifications as much as they want. This is actually a very important feature. When content creators can make changes of their own, they tend to make a lot of trials and come up with the best choice in their designs.
The page structure nature also allows content creators to create blocks of content instead of entire content in one page. Changes can be made only to a small block of content, not affecting the rest of the page.
This is actually the principle of Design Theory. With such a flexibility, content creators do not necessarily to be a write or a designer when they can make tens or even hundreds of prototypes and choose the best one in their mind, everybody can be a designer.
In fact, when time goes on, it is unavoidable that some of the content need to be changed. The flexibility of changes becomes more important, and it is also a lot of cost saving. When changes can be made easily, it can also be changed immediately.