I friend of mine, a product developer, mentioned the article Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign. When he explained me what was in the article, I thought it was about
The article was published a day before and I had no idea he was talking about THAT website. And now that I read it, I still think it is about IA.
At first I didn’t understand the word “realignment”. I considered redesigning a
The author of the article, Cameron Moll, writes to his webmaster audience: we’re creatives first, strategists (and info architects and project managers and coders and everything else under the sun) second.
IA’s are definitely strategists first. IA’s find the goals for the redesign (talk to
The problem is of course that most designers don’t know how to wear the IA hat when meeting with clients. Often these clients cannot communicate their goals or have no idea that a designer would need to know about strategic goals. After all we are just talking about graphical design, right?
If you can convince your clients to talk to you about goals and convince them to do first things first, you can checkmark the first two items on Cameron’s’ redesign to-do list.
- Ensure a “raison d’être” exists.
- Determine what level of realignment is required.
The third one, Evaluate user switching costs is actually
So many questions and so little time.
You will have a hard time getting the logfiles from the servers or get time from the sales department to talk to you about customers.
The last item Determine the impact on launch plans is project management. Determine the resources needed and make sure it happens.
The
I know it is hard because it means you have to say no. The internet is no longer a “talking dog” and you and your client cannot afford to loose track.
