Originally published: Aug 30, 2007
Lately, we’ve had a flurry of clients contacting us about their latest redesign project, wanting to know what advice we can give them. We talk to them, discussing their team’s needs and what is driving the redesign effort.
In many cases, we discover the team is thinking only in the short term. Of course, because they have immediate deadlines and resources to manage, they need to focus on what’s happening right now. The short term, after all, is where we all live day-to-day.
We’ve spent the last five years studying teams involved in major redesign efforts. Some teams regularly produce innovative, user-satisfying enhancements to their sites. Other teams work hard, but their efforts result in expensive changes that, after all is said and done, don’t really enhance the user’s experience or help the business.
As we analyze the difference between these two types of teams, we’ve noticed a pattern: teams who focus on the long term are far more likely to create designs that really pay off for the organization. Short-term thinking gets the design done, but the team ends up doing it all over again months down the road. Long-term thinking deals with the inevitability of changes and turns the site into a living, breathing entity that grows with the organization’s needs.
In our research, we’ve uncovered seven essential long-term components to reach a successful redesign project.
