Removing Domino From the Design Process
Getting back to last Wednesday's post about farming out the design process. By coincidence, the day after wrote that I sent a client some initial design concepts for a new Domino-based website. In response to the design the client said:
I will assume that you're confident about implementing the functionality implied Jake.
There's a reason for this response — the client knows Domino all too well, whereas my designer doesn't know Domino at all. For this reason the page layouts produced don't look like Domino and raise questions about whether it's even possible.
It might sound odd using a designer who knows nothing about Domino, but, trust me, it makes for much better end results. In fact I wouldn't want to use a designer who knew too much about Domino.
When planning a new website the technology that will end up being used should not be a factor in how it's designed. The only factor in its design should be the user's needs and how a design can meet them effectively.
When you know Domino you design for Domino. As developers we often design-as-we-go and that's why you can often spot a Domino site from a mile away. This is probably where part of the stigma attached to Domino comes from. Designing better-looking sites can help remove this grey cloud from above Domino within your company.
Last year I/Rockall developed a large extranet from scratch and farmed out the creative process to clearleft. Before I did any development whatsoever they went in, worked out what was needed using some "information architecture" methods, created wireframes, tested them out with real users, revised the wireframes and then added a beautiful design on top. The clients love the end result and it's gone down a storm (Phase 2 is currently under way!).
During meetings with myself, the client and clearleft there were times I had to bite my tongue. Things they were suggesting weren't exactly Domino-friendly. I never said a word though. As the developer it's my job to make sure Domino delivers what's needed.
As you'd expect there are always ways to do it in Domino. For example, remember this view selection formula hack trick? That came about as a result of the homepage needing to show documents from within certain time frames for the logged in user. Something it's easy to assume can't be done, but, as this hack shows, there's always a way.
Anyway, what I'm saying is design for the user and not for Domino.
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Jake,
Sounds like what you need to do is run a Zen garden competition for domino based websites just to prove the old dog can still do it.
Mark
Sounds like a plan Mark -- Who can create the best looking Domino website competition.
At some point I plan on making some much-needed changes to rockalldesign.com (which is just plain embarrassing as it stands) and add a portfolio of sites there.
Jake
@Jake...you are dead on here. It's best to stay technology agnostic until your design is ready based on the paper (low-fidelity) prototype methods you describe. This is the same approach we have taken with our corporate website {Link} Although it's done in Domino, a design firm did all of the layout, look and feel, etc., and then delivered to us the specifications. It's true that this sometimes makes for more difficult Domino-based development, but the results are definitely worth it. Thanks for another great read!
@chris, still might be prudent to add some $$templates to stop people from browsing the hidden areas...
eg . {Link}
if you know what I mean.
andy
@Andy...Indeed, I thought they had that in the design! Yikes. Someone else also e-mailed me about an issue with the formatting in Firefox. I'll shoot this over to our web team. Thanks for the heads up!
Well...that's one way to test your site...make a comment about it on Codestore! :-)
Web Applications, Web sites, Web 2.0, Web whatever. It's all about how a browser interfaces an application that resides on a server that uses HTTP as the protocol and HTML for presentation (all the other goodies included).
With that on mind you should never care if your app will be hosted in a Domino server or an Apache or Websphere server or Ruby, or anything.
All my designs start at the HTML/Javascript/CSS editor that I use to create the layouts, include the graphics and make all the fancy design using dummy text. After that I just move all the elements to Domino by using Pages, Forms, views, libraries, etc. and add the specific Domino functionality that makes it famous (ACL, roles, Readers & Authors fields, etc. ) and replace the dummy text with the definitive elements in Domino.
It has worked for me very well, since the Domino techniques that I'm using right now are only the basics to make it safe and role-based, all the rest is just plain HTML that is served by Domino just as I initially designed it.
.::AleX::.
I can relate to a bunch of stuff here:
-technology is a tool, not a specification. When building a house, do you make your plans according to the hammer you have?
-embarrassment: my company's website is also quite horrible. We needed a web presence rapidly for our other department (PC repairs) and it just looks weird in Firefox. Needless to say, a new site is in the works.
- end user is the most important part of the project. I lived the case where a business knowledge base was really important to the company. So important in fact that employees bonuses were linked to the content they entered in that application. But the app was so crappy, even the bonus incentive was not enough to get the people to use the database...
I see a trend here: more and more we see articles/comments about the user experience being the real important thing. I am glad that the industry seems to get back to basics. I've always been for the user experience because if you have a good UI, you don't need to write a user guide. I hate writing these guides, so I manage to get my apps so easy and intuitive that I don't need to write that guide.
; )
I love the expression that software developers have to think like cooks. You are preparing a meal for the guest's enjoyment, not your own.
I could not agree with you more. I design all my pages for a site in Dreamweaver then move them over to Domino.
That's good Brian, but only if you both avoid designing *for* Domino as well in it, which I'm sure you do.
Most of my web designs don't have much design to them and that's an area I'd like to improve. With that in mind here are some questions that might help me decide how to subcontract the design part:
1. How much should I budget for design? That is, what percentage of the total project goes to design? Any rules of thumb?
2. How do you pick a good designer?
3. What do you ask them to deliver? It's been years since I've used any web design tools like Dreamweaver but they used to generate really ugly HTML with clear gif files for positioning. I assume that's improved as Brian commented that he uses it for his Domino designs. I'd like to here more about that.
Rob,
Budget at least $1000 for design and that's for a basic two page mockup with little iteration. To get what you really want I'd say try for at least $3k. If you want to throw in usability testing, IA and wireframes you could be talking upwards of $20k.
Picking a good designer is the hard part. I have one I trust to do a good job and hope to keep hold of him. You can find them by looking for sites you like and seeing who designed it. Or look at sites like this {Link} where lots are designer's portfolios.
At the very least ask them to deliver a design for the homepage and one for an "inner" page. If the budgets there get other page designs done as well and then pass it on to a HTML bod to turn the graphic layout in to code.
Dreamweaver isn't really a design tool in the way Fireworks is. Turning graphical mockups in to HTML reality is still a job best done by hand rather than a wizard!
If you want to subcontract to Rockall I'd be happy to handle all this for you and make sure what you end up with is a plug-n-play set of HTML and image files.
Jake
Amen and Amen, Jake.
Separating the presentation layer from the functional code is long coming as SOP for Domino developers. I've been trying to do this for years now but you rightly put it - the designer should not know too much about Domino, which of course is impossible if the designer IS the developer. Working with an artist is just good sense if we want our final product to look fresh and eye catching rather than as a tool I have to figure out. Too many websites are like that. Too much UI and not enough UI design.
Thanks Jake. I just might do that.
The job I'm working on now I estimated at between 40 and 100 hours since their specs were not very specific. Of course they now want practically everything for the 40 hour price.
Thanks for your really useful thoughts and web site.
Peace,
Rob:-]