Standards and why it makes sense.
The most compelling design solutions are ones that are simple, natural to use, and completely in tune with user’s needs and experiences. Achieving these solutions in technology products are no easy task when you are designing in small sprints. It’s easy for designs to get away from you; ultimately ending in different directions without notice, eventually leaving you asking the question, why are these screens so different from one another?
Implementing Standards are a sure way to gain consistency throughout your product, aligning the approval process, streamlining production, providing elements, components and ultimately gaining production time while saving time and money. For the design team it becomes a forum of rapid communication, approval and sign off. For development this would provide a library of approved visual components that they could follow. In time, the developer could build a component library easily accessible allowing them to never have to start from scratch again. Overall, standards become the visual and functional road map for the entire application.
It’s a course a worth taking with big payoff, however, it’s not a short term project. Key decision need to be made at crucial points for the project to continue course. Everyone needs to be on board. Below is an overview to get things moving forward to start discussing how you can achieve the bigger picture.
What is the process?
The process of creating a library involves many different activities across four sequential phases:
- Analyze: understanding what it is, how it fits into our process, and what it will contain
- Create a task list items
- Categorize all content
- Create a visual library of current screens
- Create the to-do list
- Assemble: building it, including documentation, template assets, and how /where to publish them
- Decide on a place to collaborate the design (meeting, google docs, evernote?)
- Low fidelity wireframes
- Sign off / Approval
- High fidelity design
- Sign off / Approval
- Publish to? Wiki, Twiki, create our own webpage, Google Docs?
- Adopt: communicating and getting everyone onboard
- Communicating the wiki
- Adapt: administering & evolving it over time, through successive releases
- Managing and up keep
