17th
Include the future
This is an old truth - but still a very important truth: You have to design for the future, not for the present. The fact is that if you design something for a specific project and focus only on what is specified here and now you will inevitably design something that will turn obsolete extremely fast.
I’m thinking about how you explain this as I just had a cool experience with doing a design for a client where we emphasized this approach:
- Specify what you’re going to produce
- Design for what’s way beyond what you have specified for the current project
- Take the design back to what’s specified and implement only that - yet, keeping all the good stuff from the future-based design
What basically happens is this: You get a stronger design that will hold on for a much longer time because you don’t bump into design limitations too quickly as technology evolves.
To me, a webdesign foundation should last not 1 or 2 years but 3-5 years but when you design the foundation it is an absolute neccesity that you include the future needs in what you’re thinking about producing right now. It’s just another funny thing that sounds so easy and so obvious but appears pretty hard to get right down in the trenches.
