The Design Plan

The Design Plan is a document that describes the concept,design and plan to create one or more web-pages.

Design Plan Template

Components

The following should be written with a word processor like Word and each component becomes a section in your Design Plan Document.
  1. Cover Page: Has title "Design Plan for XXXXX" where XXXX is the name of the current web-authoring project. Followed by the Author(s) of the document, the date and contact information (email,etc) of the Author(s).
  2. Concept Summary: A page describing the goals and purpose of the web-page. Included should be mention of who the target audience is and the intended impact. Sub-sections
    • descriptive summary: a paragraph or two on the purpose of the web-site, and its impact. Discuss how it may be unique
    • target audience(s) and demographics: for each target audience of your web-site, give percentage of audience they represent and their demographics (age, sex, income, preferences, any other relavent descriptors)
    • short term goal(s) w/ measureable(s): Give first year goals. Be specific, if it is to build marketshare, mention numbers (either or both in percentage or cummulative numbers) for each target audience. If it is to sell products, give volumes. If it is profits, again be specific. If it is to build trust-worthiness....define what this means! Also, for each goal outline how you are going to track, measure the successfullness of achieving these goals.
    • long term goal(s) w/ measureables: Year 2- 5 goal(s). Give similar level of detailed information w/ measurables as did for short term goal(s).

     

  3. Logical/Navigation Flowchart: This section of your Design Plan is a chart that illustrates graphically the different webpages or components of them and their interactions/links to each other. The chart if possible should be written on a single page of paper and should clearly illustrate how the user can navigate around the web-site. Each web-page must be a separate "block" in the flowchart and must give the purpose of the page as well as the filename. Connections, as directional arrows, between "blocks" in your chart indicate navigational paths between pages.
  4. Resource Plan: This section lists the people involved in the project and their responsibilities and what they must deliver. Also, a time-line schedule should be given discussing when each component in the Logical/Navigation Flowchart will be completed along with Content development and final testing. Specifically you must have the following subsections:
    • People: For each person involved in project give: Name, Contact info, Biography (include relavent experiences and skills), and responsibilities and roles on this project.
    • Deliverables: Give a table (listing) of the deliverables for this project. For each deliverable: give a description, list dependencies, and give personnel responsible for this task. Number or somehow give an ID to each deliverable to be used in the Timeline/Schedule. YOU SHOULD breakdown your web-site into deliverables of each page, as well as each piece of content for each page, design, testing, advertising, etc. (look at the design process steps for ideas here).
    • Time-line: For each Deliverable in the previous sub-section, create an Excell spreadsheet or use a similar tool to illustrate the time-line of the entire project, with the span of each deliverable visible in the timeline.
    • Tools: List the tools that you will be using for the various deliverables.
  5. Detailed Design Sheets: Here the major components stylistically from the Logical/Navigation Flowchart are planned on paper as to their appearance and function. You should indicate colors, structure, any forms (and their elements), indicate where links go, etc. These sheets should give a good idea of how the web-site will look as well as how you use it and navigate the site. You will have one sheet per web-page in your web-site. Hence for each block in your flowchart, you will have a separate design sheet. (Note: if you have many pages that are the same, like a series of product pages, you only need to submit one with a note on it saying this design is the same for all the product pages). You are to use the following word document template of a web-browsers screen to draw-on and illustrate the buttons, text, etc. that will appear on that "major style web-page component".         
© Lynne Grewe