Integrating website creation disciplines doesn’t seem to be a subject that is discussed very often. The line between content development, design, and web development can often blur. But each activity is often organized independently without regard to the other discipline.
For example, should you waste your time thinking about how to integrate the display of a video onto your website if you don’t have a video to display? Even if you have a video, have you figured out a way to make sure it loads well on mobile? People will often spend a great deal of time trying to solve the problems of one discipline without solving the other two. This leads to a lot wasted time, effort, and money.
In our hyper specialized world, is it possible that a single person ought to be performing all three disciplines simultaneously?
Integrating Website Creation Disciplines: Understanding the Three Disciplines
Content development determines the information and media used by a website. This may be a single job that requires only occasional minor updates, or it may be something that requires regular updates.
Design is all about how a site looks. You should design with more than just aesthetic appeal in mind. Design should be considerate of functionality too. Content should be able to be located efficiently, but there should also be consideration for letting people know what is available. You can probably already see how the line between content development and design can blur.
Web development is all about putting content development and design into a practical reality that people can reach and understand. But content developers and designers create things that aren’t always feasible. And people that understand web development often know about tools that people in content development and design are unaware of. And content developers and designers often create things that are unnecessarily complicated or oversimplified.
Content Development, Design, and Web Development are Reciprocal
Does a photographer need to learn how to use a camera? Does a canvas artist need to learn how to paint? The answer to both questions is yes. So why doesn’t a content creator need to learn how to design and develop. Well, some content developers do learn how to design, so why don’t they learn how to develop too. You may argue that the issue is inefficiency. Or you may argue specialization produces quality.
Specialization may be effective if there is adequate communication. A member of a rock band doesn’t learn how to play every instrument. And a director doesn’t necessarily need to learn cinematography or writing or special effects. But everybody needs to make sure that they all understand the common goal that they are trying to achieve if they want to be successful. Miscommunication leads to disruption of performance. It’s not an accident that the novel (written by an individual) that was the basis for a film is usually better than the film. The novel is better (at least in part) because the communication process required to develop the novel is simpler.
What Information Do You Want to Provide?
Each website has a unique set of information that it will provide. Any design template you use should recognize this problem. So at the very least, if you use a template, then you should have a template that displays all the content you have. And it shouldn’t display features for content that you don’t have. One of the easiest ways to start a bad website is to mold your content to the design.
Integrating Website Creation Disciplines: Creativity and Functionality
Design oriented people like to get credit for being creative. This desire is often obstructive of functionality. I’ve already written about some of my design pet peeves. So I’ll try to stay out of the weeds on this subject. The only point I want to make is when you work with somebody that has knowledge of all three disciplines, you can expedite resolving these problems by working with someone with the experience necessary to avoid them.
Integrating Website Creation Disciplines: Design Tools
Creating a mock up of a website using design tools can put limits on your imagination. If you use tools to design your mockup, then the mockup tools limit the things featured on your website.
When it comes to design, it’s common practice for website designers to create a Figma or a PDF file for a web developer to base a website on. But this method serves as an intermediary to the website creation process. From the perspective of efficiency, this is a good way to create more websites faster, but it may not be the best way to create the highest quality website possible.
Using a pencil and paper may provoke you to imagine ideas that you may not be able to facilitate with a web design tool. But even if your design can be created, it may take a period of time so significant that it isn’t worth the effort.
Using website building tools to directly mock up your website into a finished product can also provoke limitations. Sometimes the simplest way to get something to look the way that you want it to is to just hard code it. Even if you have the ability to extend an existing feature (for example, a style extension on a WordPress block), you may find yourself in a situation where the existing infrastructure makes it impossible to update. Or even if it doesn’t make it impossible, your update may be precarious and potentially broken by an update for the existing infrastructure.
So what should you do?
Do You Have Sufficient Resources?
You should think about feasibility as you’re designing your website. Don’t assume that because you saw somebody else do it on another website that it will be good for your website. How much did you test the website that inspired you? Does the inspirational website have access to resources that won’t be available to you?
First your website needs to be technological feasible. And even if it is feasible, it needs to run well in a variety of environments. You’ll need to ask yourself how much you want to compromise to service different environments. Don’t forget to consider how much time you will need to build your website.
Integrating Website Creation Disciplines: Size Matters
The larger a website is, the longer it will take to bring it into existence. Consider that if you have a simple one page website, it may be worth putting more time and effort into the details of the page. But if your website is so large that you will be constantly adding new content, then you may want to use a simpler layout. A simpler layout allows you to post more new content faster. It requires fewer actions for page creation.
Specialization and Website Management
The more people that you use to build your website, the more people that you will need to manage your website. This costs more money and increases the potential for problems. Having a team may give the illusion of security because it implies checks and balances. But a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
Integrating Website Creation Disciplines: Website Builders
People are always looking for ways to give design oriented people a user interface design that is easier to use. And people are always looking for ways to give people without technical or design skills a simple template that they can just plug their content into.
Artificial intelligence promises to make hard coded web development obsolete. But the promise of making coding in web development obsolete isn’t new. There seems to be a continuous pattern.
- Somebody comes up with a simple way to make an okay website by creating a website builder.
- People want their websites to be better, so they want to add new features to the website builder.
- The website builder can do more but it becomes harder to use.
- The performance of the website builder begins to falter.
- The website builder is frustrating because it is too difficult to use.
- Somebody new comes up with a new idea for a new website builder.
The bottom line is there always has been (and likely always will be) a need for technical expertise in website creation.
Integrating Website Creation Disciplines: Combining the Three Disciplines
In our hyper incorporated world dedicated to creating an infinite array of specialties, it may seem counterintuitive to combine three complex specialties (content development, design, and web development) into a single discipline. And yet we are constantly trying to create technologies that do exactly that. In both business and art, efficiency matters. A thing is never worth anything if the thing is never finished.
The key to holding the highest standard of quality is to remember that you need three interdependent disciplines that all require their own training. Emerging technology can create the impression (the dream) that one discipline can automate the other disciplines out of existence. It may be pretty to think so. But anyone who is currently chasing that dream is like the proverbial jackass walking after the carrot on stick that’s forever out of reach.
However, automation does make it possible for one person to learn all three disciplines. When the three disciplines are contained within a single person nothing gets confused during the communication process and all interdependencies get accounted for.
Hiring Someone Who Can Handle All Three Disciplines
It can be difficult to find somebody with all three of these skill sets. Who has the time and resources to learn all three disciplines? Corporations don’t foster an individual learning all three disciplines. They have to worry about how they will replace their employees. They don’t want their employees to become too valuable. Consequently, managers with underdeveloped practical experience try to solve problems with a perspective that is too abstract and academic. Corporations push the assembly line model. They make each employee’s task simpler and cheaper until they are automated out of existence. That model may work for a large corporation, but it isn’t realistic or effective for a small or medium sized business.
Fortunately smaller businesses have the option of hiring out a third party generalist. When you can a hire a professional that has practical experience in all three disciplines, even if your small business can handle some of the disciplines itself, you can save yourself a lot of time and money by working with one individual that solves all of your other problems using real world perspective.