Buckets and Personas
Today in class we talked about buckets and wireframeing. This is where we come up with any and all ideas for a site’s content. Any widgets, inforamtion, contacts, links, content, etc, we write down in a list. No idea is too much or too out there, we’ll eventually condense down to what really matters and what can be done away with. From there we put it in “buckets”, not literally although that could be amusing. We figure out our catagories for navigation, like home, about, contact, or what have you and wite them on a dry earse board.
After that we take our ideas for content and go down the list figuring out what can be gotten rid of, and in which catagory the rest can go into. Now we have a rough idea of what we need to put in our site and what kind of information, ad copy, images, etc. we need to get from our client. This is buckets.
The other thing we discussed were personas. This is where we think about who we’re designing a site for. Who is most likely going to visit the site, what’s their age, economic status, religion, gender, etc. and we design for them. It may not be the most politicaly correct way of putting things, but it’s marketing and statistics driven. Is the site designed for upperclass middle aged women or lower class teen boys.
If it’s a site redesign we can stats on who has been there and where are they spending their time on the site. If it’s a new site we have to look at market analysis and make educated guesses basicaly. I think of it as find out who’s going to the site and put yourself in their shoes.