Wireframes

The wireframe stage was most important as it allowed us as a group, to streamline our ideas, and get feedback on the designs we had created. The idea was that we would be able to create four wireframes each to begin with, two different designs for both desktop and mobile. We would then bring in both and discuss the benefits of each and the reasons for choosing certain elements of the wireframe. This was a good process as it then allowed us to com back with a better wireframe that combined the best parts of the first two. Once we were at this stage, we combined both mine and Aidan together to create wireframe that had the best parts of the previous wireframes. Since there were three completely separate stages within the design process of the wire framing it meant we were able to smoothen out any flaws within the design. Below you will see the process between the different wireframes.

Alistair Kenyon-Brodie First Desktop Design

Alistair Kenyon-Brodie Second Desktop Design

Alistair Kenyon-Brodie Combined Desktop Design

Alistair Kenyon-Brodie First Mobile Design

Alistair Kenyon-Brodie Second Mobile Design

Alistair Kenyon-Brodie Combined Mobile Design

Aidan Crow First Desktop Design

Aidan Crow Second Desktop Design

Aidan Crow Combined Desktop Design

Aidan Crow First Mobile Design

Aidan Crow Second Mobile Design

Aidan Crow Combined Mobile Design

Combined Mobile Design

Combined Desktop Design

As you can see the wireframes began with a very simple design, something worth noting from the offset is the way both of the designs contain an overlay on top of the welcome image. Aidan’s was the logo, mine was the greeting message, this is something we decided from the beginning that we should keep for the final version, and you can see in the final design that the images have an overlay that is specific to their state. Aidan and I had a similar idea when it came to the categories page, and how to present the different ones. Mine consisted of segments with images inside that represented the category while Aidan had a blank page which held icons for each category. This is again something we combined, so that the background image changed to something that related to the category when you hovered over the icon.

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INDIVIDUAL REFLECTION OF STAGE 1

The research stage was the most important of the entire procedure, by completing our research, we would be armed and equipped to successfully cary out the following stages while knowing 100% our client, the ideas and issues surrounding the area of business we would be entering. In the real world, the purpose of a redesign is not just to make it look nice, but instead to maximise potential sales by creating functional, usable and well designed websites that are accessible to everyone. By researching the client, the business field they operate, and the target audience, you are able to make design decisions based upon the needs of your clients target audience. This is not designing what you think looks good, but maximise the potential profit of the client. I knew to get the most work done, it would be important to split the tasks fairly between me and Aidan. I created a planner which allowed us to see the deadlines the work had to be completed by, I also built in meet up stages where we would discuss our research and progress so far. This mean’t we would both be on the same page, which would help with the team work aspect of things.

Trying to maintain this strict schedule was difficult as I had planned a reasonably fast paced timeline to get the research done so we could move on to the designing within three weeks, meaning we would complete all required work way before hand in date.

This was somewhat difficult, with personal issues within the group, i was forced the hand of sometimes making decisions that were mean’t to be made as a group. The breakdown of the content was broken down by myself to ensure we stuck to our timetable.

Managing time is a huge element of working in a group and using the planner has helped us stay on track but we must continue to stay on track if we are to succeed with this brief as a group.

Something that I never built into the brief was the fact that along the way I would find additional things to research. This was a slight drawback and has mean’t I have been completing the additional work in the next stage. This is something I have learn’t and will be building into the next brief schedule I make.