Dad With Teeth

The Devil is in the Details

I love the opening line, “With the legwork and planning of the site essentially completed…” Hah! We are still struggling with our personas and vision statements. At least reviewing the complexity of what is before us should really help to light a fire under our collective tail. I do like the idea of coding each page only once. Not that I have ever managed to get the code of any web page correct from the get-go. But I do like the idea of having the structure, the architecture, the design, the audience expectations and the content clearly defined and prepared prior to coding. For me, the best part of the article is the client spec sheet idea. I know from my experience it is absolutely critical to create a document outlining the specific expectations of both the client and the vendor. All too often the scope of the project changes and someone will need to pay for that implementation. A clearly defined and agreed-to document drafted up front will give you solid ground for requesting additional resources for creating any deliverables changed by the client.

OK, this is really granular. What browser displays 64x480? I know 640x480 is standard NTSC 4x3 space (displayable on a television.) Is the 64x480 a banner ad? Or is it a typo? If it is a typo it is repeatedly used in the Spec Sheet.

If there is one thing we all take away from this week’s reading, it is that as we enter into next term we will need an agreed-to production timetable. If we want to be live in week 10 of Spring, we need to have our site fairly functional by the end of week 7 to allow for two weeks of testing and tweaking (a site never works correctly right out of the gate.) That means that much of our content and final design will need to be in by week 5 so we have two weeks of intense coding before roll-out, the style sheets for the site will need to be locked by week 4, the structure of the site with prototypes done by week 2 so we can do some usability testing during week 3. All of this will be happening with significant coding going on from week 1 through 9. Which means the card tests and outline will need to be done the first week. This is just a guess, but probably not that far off. It will take some serious time to generate the content, write the code and agree to the design (both graphically and structurally.) In addition, naming conventions will be critical because we will have so many fingers in this pie. Just keeping track of the assets required for the site will be a full time job. Week eleven of Spring term should be fun... Because we will be done and we will either really like each other or be glad we won't have to see each other for the summer. :-)

posted by Drew Keller @ Sunday, February 19, 2006