Pete, Soraya and Ruth are all part of the Technical Innovation team here at Magpie. They recall a secret part of the digital process that our clients very rarely see and wanted to share this with you…
Pete says, “After taking a client brief and running a consultation workshop, one of the first things we do is run an internal ‘find and do’ exercise to determine how we should design the sitemap and navigation. During this exercise we think of all the things a website’s audience needs to find and all the things they need to do online (we think of these things by each taking on a different audience persona). We quite often run this exercise with clients but we also develop it and run it when we get back to the office to check we’ve caught everything, which is something clients don’t usually see.”
Soraya says, “when developing the front end (or in other words, the look) of a website, there are a few things we need to think through at the start. Planning the order of elements like images, titles or blocks of text is really important to determine how the layout adapts for mobile or tablet view. We can even hide certain elements on one view that appear once the screen is a certain size.
These are called media queries and they tell the website when and what they need to change. We can make the site change behaviour in terms of size but can also set parameters to control changing text styles and colours. I tend to plan this early on in the design process.”
Ruth says, “Good design requires collaboration between designers and developers from start to finish. We are constantly refining our digital process as there are new technologies all the time and the digital world is constantly changing. I am responsible for thinking about the overall UX early on in the design and wireframing stage. I think about the design and function of everything from the smallest detail, such as buttons and gifs, to the overall content on the site.”
We’re excited to be celebrating our 7th birthday and to mark the occasion we are revealing the secrets we feel contribute to agency success. Find more on Twitter using our hashtag #7forasecret
