Goodbye Ergh Designs, Hello Users

Boring Student’s design and build process has been a bit all over the shop. We started specing, then designed, then speced a bit more, then did some build, then some more design then called the whole thing off. Well, not quite but we have gone back to the drawing board.

One of our developers back from a week long tech camp the other week came back to the office full of new ideas she wanted to put into practice and it’s really paid off. Her approach was to stop what we’re doing and get back to the user. It’s often the case that when you get so far into a web project, you actually forget who you’re doing it for – the end user. So personal opinion creeps in and, invariably, the product suffers.

You can usually sense the signs. People argue and squabble over minor points (not that we ever argue at Boring, no no no!!), there is little sign of progress, there’s a lack of drive and people seem to lack the excitement they once had.

This interjection couldn’t have happened at a better time!

We spent a few days reminding ourselves who will be using the site. It wasn’t us, though we will use it religiously. And it’s important to make decisions on behalf of the user, rather than as the user. We’ve disgruntled 20 year old lad who really couldn’t be bothered with University, a high-achieving 14 year-old boy who was planing his University before he’d even started GCSEs, a single mum of two kids who’re at secondary school and a few other interesting characters. They’re all now close to my heart as it’s these characters who are reminding me what the site is all about. It’s difficult for a site to serve all users but as long are you are thinking about the users and not yourself, you’re on the right track.

Armed with this breath of fresh air, we’re about to embark on a serious change to the User Interface of the site. This kicked off today with new wire frames and, hoping that Christmas excess doesn’t kick in too early for our designers, we should have some designs by the early part of next week. I’m very excited!