Not long ago I was handed a project that had been designed by other teams (marketing teams). When the project was handed off to me the selection of development tools had been made based on the experience of the people making the decisions. Unfortunately the client knew little of the tool, and those who recommended the tool knew nothing about the client’s wishes for the site - they just knew the tool in question.

After months of meetings and mock-ups there had not been a single working prototype nor a meeting that included anyone who would be using, developing, or maintaining the website. The end result was a month of trying to work with a tool that easily allow for the type of website the client  wanted followed by a late switch to a tool the client was more familiar with that did fit those needs. Interestingly I got the project because the client was less than thrilled with the mock-ups he was receiving from the people who knew and recommended the discarded tool. The sites in the mock-ups would have fit well within the environment of that tool.

The projects served to remind me that development is part of the design process. If you want to design and then develop you should probably expect that the time spent on design will be largely duplicated after development starts.

One of the most useful design practices I have found is prototyping. It helps to have a solid model that everyone can relate to as the design and development progress. I recently learned of a company that use prototyping in an area where I would not have considered it possible - marketing. Apparently they test marketing approaches to tune the marketing strategies of their clients. I guess that just goes to show how valuable and broadly applicable the practice of prototyping is.