There are many tutorials and “how-to’s” that deal with websites.  Many of them are related to designing the website in Photoshop, Illustrator and even Fireworks.  These are great tutorials and some even include taking the Photoshop file, slicing and converting to html.  This can then be placed in an html editor, most commonly, Dreamweaver.  I am sure many know that you need a domain and hosting for a website; but some may need to know what is required to go from start to finish. In this essay, I will guide you in developing that idea in your head, into something you will be proud to show to the world.Let’s begin.

You need to start with brainstorming.  Many people, including myself, use programs, notebooks, or the mind mapping method.  This is a form of the pre-writing concept of clustering.  You will need to determine what it is that your users will want and need. A great starting point is the book, “The Elements of User Design”.  

In a field laden with tutorials about how to make the latest 2.0 web layout we are going to back track and determine what does the user want.  We will answer two questions:

What do the users want from the site?
What do our stakeholders want from the site?

Businesses have come to recognize that providing a quality user experience is very important and helps them with their sustainability.  According to Jesse Garrett, “it is user experience that forms the custpomer’s impression of the company’s offerings, it is user experience that differentiates the company from its competitors, and it is user experience that determines whether your custponer will ever come back.”

Pondering the design process.

Successful designers use these steps and they can even forget these basics; as a result, let us learn these for the first time or be reminded a three simple steps to help promote good design habits. How to get good ideas? Ideas involve both content and form.  There are many books and far more technical terms used for this but I learned that it is best to try and keep it simple.  As proposed in Design Basics, let’s go with Thinking, Looking, and Doing. Everyone is different and this is not a 12 step program to design.  Use these steps organically and even let them overlap if need be.

I figure I would jump on the blog bandwagon.  I am not a good writer, though I plan on improving that while at AiPO (The Art Institute of Pittsburgh Online division). This is mostly an explanation of my assignments and hope to make them more of a tutorial as well.  I really appreciate all vistors, comments and subscriptions to this site.  Constructive feedback is welcome as I am new to alot of this stuff but there are people who don’t know this information.  So I wish to pass this along and hang out and discuss my interest with others.

Thanks again for visiting.