Hard Decisions

This past week has been quite interesting with trying to complete our first project. It has been a bit of a struggle to find time to work on the site and get it to where I envisioned it originally. However, whats been most difficult to work through has been the challenge of working through the tough problems that come up in website development.

In this case, it was an issue of choosing between design and function. I had a vision of how I wanted the site to look, and spent a bit of time putting my thoughts together into a plan. Yet, even with planning, things do not go as you want them to. As I neared the end of the development project as I put everything together into the page, I discovered that there was an extremely small issue with the design that, even with being minuscule, was not going to fly for the final revision.

This led me to a hard choice. I could either change the design of the part that had the issue, or I could spend an indeterminate amount of time researching ways to fix the problem. I spent a bit coming up with design alternatives, but I'm the kind of person that sets their mind on something; Anything besides the original idea will just never look the same. So I decided to dedicate my time to trying to find a way to fix the issue, instead of opting for the less-attractive-but-simpler-to-implement design option.

In the end, and with lots of trial and error, I found a way to make it work. I was happy I spent the time that I did in order to get the site to be where I want to be. However, my mentality of striving to achieve perfection has led me to learn a few lessons: In this case, everything turned out ok since I had the time to spend on the issue. However, there will be situations where, when building a website, you simply don't have the time or resources to dedicate to working out all the issues you may run into with your build. Its at that moment where, as a designer, you must make a very hard decision; You either sacrifice your ideal design for something that has a little less wow-factor, or you end up with something that has a few loose ends. In my case, I always think of it this way: The website can look absolutely stunning...but if the user can't use it or a part of it, you might as well submit it to an art gallery, since that's about as much use that it will be.