What's your web design (and pre-web-design) process?

[B.Will.C]

Hello again, everybody -

Hope you’re having an awesome day.

Looking for an advice regarding how to optimally structure the process of coming up with a full-fledged design for a web site (or a part of it) - starting from scratch.

The most recent tutorial, released on FCC’s YT channel is awesome.

It doesn’t go all the way down to the actual content, though.

Thus, my question: how do you structure your web design? - and, perhaps more importantly, what do you do before you start designing for the web?

Following the tutorial, it seems that the logical algorithm to follow is:

1. Define the site-map
2. Choose which content goes where
3. Create a low-fidelity prototype (wireframe)
4. Come up with a basic gray layout to customize (with Figma, Adobe XD, etc.)
5. Customize it with colors, fonts, images, text, shadows, animations, etc.
6. Code it up in HTML, CSS, JS - using some CSS/JS frameworks (or not).

Is that how you’d do it? - or would you rather jump in straight into Bootstrap?

Any thought or advice would be appreciated, especially from those who’ve have a hands-on experience designing their own projects from scratch - I’d love to hear from you.

[kevinSmith]

For me at least, it really depends on what you’re building and with whom. If I’m working on something small (especially by myself) then I’d probably just wing it. At work, there is a team of people taking care of the first 5 of your steps. Even if working on my own on a large project (for example I have a current side project that is kind of big) Then I will put some more thought into the hierarchy of the app, do out some sketches, plan a color scheme, choose fonts, etc. before I begin coding. I don’t really do a lot of “design” pre-thought - but maybe that’s why I’m a terrible designer.

Everybody has their own system and they have to adapt to the team and project. You can figure out for yourself what works for you.