Micah Boswell: The Hybrid Advantage

I just rolled off a really enjoyable project for an interactive agency in Dallas.  It was immensely fulfilling and validating, as well.  Fulfilling because we managed to ring the project in way under budget, and almost a month early.  It was validating because I was able to wear many hats within the project scope, and in so doing helped facilitate the transitions between concepting, design, comp preparation and HTML/CSS implementation.  The hybrid approach works.

Of Documentation and Communication

The mighty creative brief.  Once the pillar of all good traditional agencies, it has now come upon rough times.  As a project grows in complexity, and as the designer takes on more responsibilities beyond just the role of ‘translating the business speak into visual mojo’, one has to ask themselves, should the brief still be, well, brief?  A question being debated on many art direction and design management boards these days, my own opinion is very agnostic.  I don’t side with the traditionalists who think a page is more than enough for the Design team, and I don’t side with the IXD zealots who believe that the creative brief doesn’t translate well in the interactive world.  Much like all other documents prepared for the sake of clarifying priorities for the project, it just depends.  We were fortunate enough to have an enlightened and pragmatic Project Manager who didn’t believe in documentation for the sake of documentation – instead, we spent a good deal of time in the kick-off meeting contextualizing the statement of work, and approaching the project plan as a series of cascading milestones.  We left plenty of wiggle room for decision points in case we needed to change course, and we kept informal lines of communication very open.  That in and of itself can be the kind of communication that no 300 page creative specifications document could ever match to.  Stay flexible, adapt to the project, and remember – documentation can only go so far in clarifying project priorities – you’re going to need to communicate your way through the rest of it.

Be Generous with Wireframing

Early on in the project we decided to go with both lofi and hifi wireframes.  At first glance, there was hesitation at this approach, but in the end it made perfect sense to everyone.  The lofi wireframes were effective in communicating the functional variables and nuances to the internal development team.  The lofi’s also helped the technical leads on the customer end understand where and how they were getting setting technical requirements met.  However, our primary stakeholder wasn’t a technical mind.  He was a business owner with a mind for the brand and the experience.  We knew, even before stepping into the project that showing him lofi wireframes would do nothing but confuse him.  We provided him with a hifi wireframe set with initial comps built in to show him how the brand and the experience would interact with the functionality.  This eliminated any miscommunication or misassumption in regards to how the three key elements of the site would seamlessly interact – Brand, User Experience, And Interaction.

There is no ‘PM’ in Team.  But wait.  There should be.

A good project manager does more than facilitate the hand-off from one area of expertise to another.  A good PM facilitates, but also manages and makes the tough decisions when need be.  With or without a RACI approach to your project, the PM should have the unique insight into the Statement of Work, the budget and the timeline to understand how best to resolve conflict between specialties, or find ways to bring the three elements into balance if they’ve come out of sync.  In our case, the project manager was all this, guaranteeing a successful project, and a client that rarely complained and felt like they had gotten more than their money’s worth.  Kudos to great teams!