When David Siegel was a web designer and a pundit to be reckoned with, he wrote the only book on web project management available at the time—Secrets of Successful Web Sites: Project Management on the World Wide Web.
      The book has been out of print for some years, and some of its content has been superseded. But it is a good read and the best part of the book is its stories of some typical projects of the time, and their trials and tribulations from the designers’ point of view.
      There has been a need for a more contemporary version, one that extends on the promise of that first book, and Web ReDesign: Workflow that Works might just be it.

Workflow That Works
Workflow and project management is one of those things they do not teach you at art school. It’s something barely raised at the conferences I have attended. Yet it is essential to having a successful design career. There are some web design conferences where the topic is discussed—they’re the ones where authors Kelly Goto and Emily Cotler present.
      Web ReDesign’s title contains the word redesign, for the fact the vast majority of commercial web sites undergo regular improvements in order to maintain their viability. Some sites, such as Amazon.com, seem to be tweaking their interface every day. Any major web site that has not gone one or two redesigns each year since inception has either hit on a lucky winning formula, or the owners have lost interest.
      That does not mean this book is not as useful to designers beginning a brand new project. They have as much to learn from it and maybe more so. I have been following the progress of a new web portal project a colleague is building for a while now, and he and his employers could have benefited greatly from having copies of Web ReDesign. All the classic mistakes appear to have been made, potentially costing jobs, the start-ups viability and the investors’ capital.
      The essence of Web ReDesign is in the Core Process that Goto and Cotler have developed from their own experience and that of contributors like Jeffrey Zeldman, Jacob Nielsen, Chad Kassirer and David Siegel. It is clearly explained and best of all it works. The companion website www.web-redesign.com contains forms and templates for your to adapt and use in your own practice. The value extends far beyond a book to read.

I Speak Heresy
There is only one thing wrong with this unique and invaluable book, but it is not serious enough to remove its fifth star. What I am going to say will be heresy to some. If you have a weak stomach, please stop reading here.
      There is an institutionalized failing within the design profession that few contemporary designers seem to be addressing. The profession of web design has apparently forgotten about it. Not even Web ReDesign acknowledges the scope of the problem, although the authors do acknowledge that it is "often overlooked".
      Designers simply do not appear to be reading the stuff they are creating their designs for. Reading has become an option rather than a necessity, and content has become separated from design. In most cases design is being done well before the content—the text—shows up. This hands-off approach to content has become an established feature of contemporary design practice, on the client side as much as the designer’s.

Where Did It Go Wrong?
Web design is partially the offspring of graphic design—design that supports the printed word. The web is also the stepchild of motion graphics design—the kind of thing we see at the beginning of motion pictures, as well as in traditional animation. The masters of both media past and present make a point of understanding the stuff they are designing for, as proven by numerous interviews and books.
      When a master of print design is about to create a book, he reads the text so that the tale and its tone suggests its graphic handling. A motion graphics designer ensures he experiences enough of the movie or its rough cut to know the plot, the characters and the overall emotional state, often reading the script to start with.
      By contrast, web designers appear to view reading the text as an option but not a necessity, and often go about the business of constructing the text’s container separate to the delivery of the stuff the site is about.

Strange Separations
On page 79 of Web ReDesign, Project Roles, the authors state that “in some situations, the copywriter is also the content manager—in charge of tracking all assets” and “suggest that the copywriter(s) and the content manager be hired by, and work directly for, the client, with their output being defined as a deliverable.”
      It matters little whether the content creator is hired directly by the designer or the client. To their credit authors Goto and Cotler further expand on their initial comments about content in Phase 2: Developing the Project. They write that, “Content is critical to any site. Without good, relevant content, your fancy technology and whip smart graphics are simply empty placeholders.… But for many sites, you may find that the client is not prepared for the enormity of gathering and preparing content and may have heaped the responsibility on some hapless individual who already has a full plate.”
      In my experience it is almost certain that the person given the content job by the client will hardly have a clue to the extent of their new responsibilities. Delivery will be put off, and when the content finally arrives it may well be hopelessly inadequate. What often happens is that a load of brochures, presentations and PR material are dumped on the desk with expectation that it will become a website. Dumping is a term heard a little too often in planning meetings. Dump on the customer and they will dump you even faster.
      Despite the truths of the matter, there is a widely-held belief that people do not read the content of websites but go there to interact with funky graphics and navigation systems in order to grab short chunks of data. But people do read on the web—just observe yourself the next time you visit an online magazine or news site. People read well-written text that is made easier to read by good, supportive design built around the nature of the content.
      My point is that it is not enough to separate yourself from the content, but in fact to take responsibility for it even though that is not really your job. If you leave things to take their natural course, your superb designs may well be compromised by poor content. And then where will you be?

Proof Is In The Numbers
Page 195 of Web ReDesign contains a table showing the results of a Forrester research survey of why people return to websites. Almost 80% return for high-quality content, 70% because of ease-of-use, less than 60% for speedy downloads and 55% return if a site is frequently updated.
      More proof again that content is king but that if the quality, quantity and appropriateness of the content, not to say whether it turns up at all, is an issue than I believe that as web designers we must reassess our role in the process of creating it.
      That may mean we assume responsibilities that do not come under the traditional role of designer, or that design firms mutate into designer/publishers more like the contract magazine publishers that work for corporate clients, or that new types of web agencies altogether spring up.
      The web is still a new phenomenon, and there is plenty of room and time for us to explore new paradigms instead of expecting that old ones inherited from other media will do the job.

The Book:

• Title: Web ReDesign: Workflow that Works
• Authors: Kelly Goto and Emily Cotler
• Publisher: New Riders
• Publication Year: 2001
• Pages: 254
• Illustrations: Colour
• Website: www.web-redesign.com
• ISBN: 0072170743
• Rating: 5

• Keys to a Successful Redesign
• One Process Fits All
• Phase 1: Defining the Project
• Phase 2: Developing the Project
• Phase 3: Visual Design and Testing
• Phase 4: Production and QA
• Phase 5: Launch and Beyond
• Testing for Usability
• Analyzing Your Competition