Demographix

Stakeholder Interviews/Information gathering

We prefer a collaborative approach to projects so we set about gathering as much information as we could. For example, we needed to know where Demographix positions itself, its business objectives and its audience. Getting to the heart of the reason for designing a new website keeps everyone in our team from designers to developers focused on the same goals.

Mood Boards

From the information gathering stage, we picked up adjectives such as “clear, helpful, human, professional” and “innovative”. Mood boards allowed us to discuss aesthetical choices with Demographix separately from any structural aspects such as the how the website needed to be organised and where things should go on each page.

Design Iterations

Using the mood boards as a starting point we iterated a design, mostly in Photoshop but also in HTML. We showed Demographix at various stages to avoid any surprises that might occur if we simply “revealed” our design at the end. Good design is often the product of good communication

The Deliverable

As Demographix are comfortable authoring pages using HTML we built a combination of page templates and a HTML pattern library. The pattern library allowed Demographix to mix and match HTML blocks (e.g. headings, block quotes, layout blocks, forms etc.) into any combination they needed to build the actual pages.

It’s always a nervous time when we create a site like this, because how the pages look is very much the responsibility of the client, rather than CST. Thankfully, though, the folks at Demographix have made a really good job of adding their content to our design framework.

What’s Next?

A new website shouldn’t be viewed as something you do and then leave alone until the next big re-design. There are always new ideas, room for improvement and advances in technology. We’ll be in close contact with Demographix to make suggestions and offer friendly advice.

There’s no single process

Although this process worked in this instance we realise that each client has different needs and different ways of approaching projects internally. We’d be happy to discuss any requirements you might have.