Our Design Process
At the zen kitchen, we believe that the best design results from active and open collaboration between creatives and clients. Our proven, research-driven process helps us consistently create effective, award-winning design that works hard for your business.
Phase I: Strategy, Goal-setting, Requirements & Research
All of our projects begin by working with you to drill down to the core of your messaging, audience and goals. During this first phase, we will refine our understanding of your business, your target audience, and the competition. We will also more clearly define the project’s goals, and define what success will look like. We will also further define the functional, technical, and information requirements for your project. This allows you to clarify any unclear details prior to actual Web design and development.
The deliverables for this stage will include:
• A finalized design brief describing our understanding of the project’s goals, functional requirements and audience;
• A detailed schedule to guide the process, provided through our project management system.
Phase II: Creative exploration & Design Development
Through creative thinking, collaborative discourse and a healthy dose of intuition, we develop ideas to visually express your core message. Every choice, from layout and color to type size and style, is made with your communication goals in mind. The best ideas are further refined into initial concepts, which we will present to you. From there, we discuss and refine to turn these concepts into comprehensive design directions.
The deliverables for this stage will include:
• Two to three strategic design concepts for evaluation;
• Refinement of your chosen design direction.
Phase III: Implementation and Testing
Once the design direction is approved it’s time to implement. At this phase we push pixels, lay out pages, configure, code and collaborate to make sure that each element we produce aligns with your communication goals. During this phase, we also work with you to create and/or gather needed text and images, and incorporate them into the production flow.
We proof and refine the design, test, de-bug, proof again, and prepare for final production or launch. For all of our websites, we perform cross-browser checking on IE7 (and above), Firefox for PC and Mac, and Safari to ensure that the design works perfectly cross-browser. We work closely with all vendors – print, web or otherwise – to ensure that your finished product meets our (and your) standards of excellence.
The deliverables for this stage will include:
• Production proofs for proofing and refinement as needed;
• Production management for the finished project;
• The finished project;
• Documentation and training as needed for brand guidelines, updating web content, etc.
Phase VI: Measure and Refine
Our work isn’t done after the project delivers. We want to know how it’s working. We work with you to gather feedback, and evaluate not only how the process went, but also what the response has been from the target audiences. At this point, we’ll also work together to identify areas of the project that can be refined for future iterations, and develop a plan for the next phase of production.
