Requirements

Before working on comps, you want to understand your client’s requirements and the scope. At the beginning of the project, gather information, complete background research, analyze the budget, outline the timeline, review maintenance needs, establish the purpose of the website, and document who is the target audience (you know that it is not the client who’ll put up with the website!).

In most cases, this is part of the project profiler. This is a bare-bones example, and you can modify it as you gain more experience. Identify the client single point-of-contact to avoid nagging from all directions. It’s valuable to clarify and document roles and responsibilities of the players on the project.

As the project progresses, a typical client or co-worker will attempt to add more stuff especially when discovering all those cool, wiggly thingies on the web. Consider explaining to the client that any change during the project requires a change request document. The document spells out the new requirement, modified timelines and approved budget for the changes. Too often, designers find themselves agreeing “to add this little item since we’re working on it anyway.” Those nasty little items add up to continuous sleepless nights.

Beneficial items to include in requirements:

Message
Audience
Action
Content
Technology capabilities
Maintenance / support
Administration
Site promotion / search engines
Schedule
Naming conventions
Communications checkpoints

When all sign-offs and approvals are done, move forward to Design.

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