I think I want to number out every bullet print from this chapter and make it my new questionnaire for a new client. It may be a little overkill, but if followed as outlined in this chapter, an amazing product could most certainly be achieved. I have a hunch this chapter is leading us into information architecture, because i feel it neglected wire-framing.
2 Things I've Experienced From The Chapter
"Organizing Content: The Alphanumeric Solution"
Comps can go through tons of revisions, and at a place i worked, they labeled folders with the flattened jpegs which were presented to clients, prefixing the revision number (which increments) with "r_". this helped when other designers were coming into a project and they needed the most recent layered version of a revision, they just found the folder with the highest number.
"Content Analysis"
I feel like most clients want an entertaining website, because they never seem ready to talk about their content. It's so hard to start a design about a company when all you have is a name and an email personality. Which is totally funny because all a website does is organize the companies purpose, goals and salespoints. These things should be known and already spelled out, maybe not in lingo and organized, but thought out.
Many people have started using Dropbox, some for a simple online thumb drive, and some because it has automatic version tracking. With subversion and other versioning programs, it allows designers and developers to backtrack to previous working files, not lose important work they may have done, and share their up to date files with other people involved in the project. While managing and maintaining a good versioned file structure, there are moments where it can be a life saver.
This guys entire huge post is all about how he brainstorms content, initially organizes it, and eventually refines it into a clean and navigate-able arrangement of content.
