Building Websites - A Social Experiment
Image by Kayleigh Jane
Contrary to popular opinion, good website don’t just happen overnight. A good site can take several months to build - even years.
There’s a good rhythm that goes into taking a site from concept to completion. Here’s the road we usually take at GiANT when we are creating something new online. Let’s call this “Exhibit A.” (I’m going to offer a different concept in a minute. Feel free to skip down if this is beginning to bore you.)
- Strategy - what do we want to accomplish, who’s the audience, etc.
- Outline - focus on the content, layout the overall structure of the content of the site
- Block Out/Wireframe - focus on the layout of individual pages/sections, determine how many different page types you’ll need
- Design - create the look/feel of the site based on 1-3
- Code - make the design reality
- Build Out - marry content and coded design
- Test - test internally first, then externally with test group
- Tweak - make necessary changes, retest
- Launch - launch the final site to the public
This method is tried & true - we’ve built close to a dozen sites in the last couple of years using this process and it has served us well.
I’m toying with a new notion, though, and am itching to try it out as a social experiment. If someone that you know has done this, let me know, but from what I’ve seen, I haven’t seen it accomplished quite like this.
What if we simply laid the foundation and nothing else?
Take an event website, for example. What if we created the very base level - maybe something as simple as the event name, date/time, and other, minimal, pertinent info.
Then, we launch it & invite others to speak into the next steps.
We approach it from a weekly build standpoint, taking input and feedback from everyone, makes changes/growing the site, and then launching a new version at the end of every week.
How cool would it be to see the site begin to take on life as people add their own insights and concepts and help make it better. We might even keep a historical build record so that people could see how it evolved over time.
In the end (and you’d need to set an end point to look ahead to), you’d have a socially build site that carried the fingerprints of hundreds, maybe even thousands, of people, and which, because of this fact, was exactly what the community needed it to be.
Just an idea… thoughts?
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Chris shared their voice on 07.22.2009:
Caleb shared their voice on 07.23.2009:
I’ve actually seen an example of this on some websites, and thought it was a unique idea. I’ve never done it myself, though.
Good luck!
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Darcey Hooper shared their voice on 07.13.2009:
Ok, I’ll bite. This social experience must have some comon thread to draw viewers participatants. One single event, can draw participants for a while but then may or may not draw more unto itself because there maybe a narrow band of participatants. However, this sounds really interesting. I would lilke to see what would happen.