What we do: Our detailed design process

When it comes to building the system, however, the devil is in the detail. We produce detailed, high-quality wireframes to highlight key features, documenting both the layout and the exact functionality.

We create one or a series of documents that provide detail on each unique template in a system and its exact function. This documentation needs to work for both the client to sign off on and for the technical developers to have sufficiently unambiguous functional descriptions to build from.

It takes experience to produce documentation that works for both laypeople and techies equally well, and we have found that the secret is to keep it short and simple, breaking up documentation into manageable chunks with plenty of visual examples.

Don’t recreate the wheel

In the past, the design of websites has often been considered a purely creative domain, with art directors being able to exercise the full range of their creative skills designing something beautiful, new and interesting.

The beautiful is still absolutely required, as is a real feeling of personality, but the ‘new and interesting’ part of the design process has turned out to be a red herring and increasingly users expect new sites to work like their favourite ones. They are generally looking for specific content or functionality and the design needs to be clear but not get in the way.

There has been consolidation in the way websites work, and this is being documented and turned into something of an emerging standard in best practice. There is not full consensus yet as to exactly what best practice is, but the solutions to commonly recurring interaction problems are now well documented as UI design patterns (see http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/).

Over the last five years we have become increasingly involved in the UI patterns movement and have incorporated this into our design process. We have created a library of over 50 design patterns, which we use on a regular basis for subjects including:

• Login
• Registration
• Password reminder
• Search results
• Contact form
• Item lists

Design patterns: good, quick, cheap

So with the use of design patterns we believe we can achieve the holy grail of good, quick and cheap. Using design patterns has three great benefits:

• We are reusing our designs and code, which ensures speed.
• We know they work well, which ensures quality and best practice is built in.
• We can devote our design skills and time to just solving the unique challenges that come with any new project rather than re-creating the wheel.

You will find an example of one of our design patterns here for Search results.
We estimate that taking the patterns route can reduce design times by up to 75% for more complex systems.

Build and testing services

At U Interactive we stick to what we are best at, which is great design. We do not directly build websites or provide testing services for clients, but we understand that clients often need a full service to be provided. We are able to recommend a range of technical and testing partners with whom we have worked successfully over the last five years.