For the last 3 years, I have been an interactive designer in a university setting. I design and develop web sites used for online classes in the school of fine arts at Arizona State. Why is this relevant? Well, I no longer have clients per se. I have a boss, and I work with faculty members, and keeping them happy is a much different thing than keeping a paying client happy. What I have discovered is that over time more and more of my designing is taking place live, in the browser.
Let me rewind a bit to see if I can capture the progression. I was trained as an interactive designer, but the beginning of my career involved mainly print and writing projects. For these projects, obviously every i was dotted and every t was crossed in Quark (later Indesign), before being bundled up (or pdf’d) and sent to the press. I started off as a freelancer, bounced around a couple agencies/studios, before again becoming a freelancer. It was during this second run that I began taking more web design work. Most of this was strictly design work. I’d design, it’d be approved, and the files would be handed off to get cut up and coded. This process required the full development of Photoshop files.
In my current position, when I design a site, I also do the majority of the front-end development. Overtime, I have seen a decrease in the completed state of Photoshop files, and an increase in the time spent in BBedit tweaking things out in CSS. Now, don’t get me wrong, I still complete a lot of things in Photoshop. Most of the wireframe is finished, most of the graphical elements are in place before I start coding. The things that are up-for-grabs generally include color choices, borders, typography, interaction choices, and the like.
For the most part, I would argue that this approach is appropriate for web design. Things change when they hit the browser, start moving about and changing faces. Overall, I think it improves the interaction design of the sites — we have all had that experience where something seems like it should work on paper…but doesn’t. I am not sure how this way of designing would, or could translate in a world where a client needs to see three designs fully developed before moving forward. And I will admit that even I still do multiple designs…I just don’t finish them.
Example: Unfinished Pop Rock Image