Posted by dboeke on December 4, 2008 at 2:06pm
Is anyone aware of a good guide for creative agencies with regard to creating user interfaces/web site designs that are easly implemented with drupal?
Drupal User Interface Guide for Creative Agencies
Comments
Are you looking for examples
Are you looking for examples of "this is how we do existing $interface widgets in Drupal or "if you are going to build this new $interface widget, do it like this so that it aligns with how we do stuff in Drupal"?
I mean, are you looking for examples of how to do existing things or guidelines on how to add new things? Sorry if that sounds vague but I can't really tell what you are asking for :-)
Not really looking for examples...
I was really looking for a guide to what type of wireframes lend themselves to becoming a drupal theme. In other words, if we engage a creative agency to design a website for us, what are the design constraints that the agency should keep in mind when they are doing the design to make it easy to implement as a Drupal theme?
Thanks
Drupal doesn't provide constraints, it provides opportunities
We don't have any hard and fast guidelines for creating wireframes for creative partners, but I talked a little bit about this in my Drupalcon Szeged session on the Dos and Don'ts of Designing for Drupal (the wireframe examples aren't included in my slides, but you can see me walk through them starting around the 14 minute mark on the video).
We don't use wireframes on every project, but when we do, the approach that we generally take is to abstract them as much as possible and include as many notes on them that describe the intended functionality in plain English (the "designer view"), but then also have an overlay that shows how the wireframes will be implemented in Drupal with the block regions, etc. (the "developer view"). We've found that providing our creative partners with as much information as possible about how their designs will be implemented is very helpful, as long as you make sure to explain it in non-technical language as well. Providing detail about individual block elements (as opposed to just saying things like "login box goes here") is also very important.
In a more general sense, we believe that the single most important element in a successful collaboration with a creative partner is communicating with them as much as possible throughout the entire course of the project. We will often participate in early ideation sessions, helping to provide suggestions for more "Drupal-optimized" ways of achieving desired functionality, and we always consult frequently with our partners throughout the development process, because questions and issues will always come up, no matter how much front-end preparation you do.
We don't approach working with Drupal as something that should put constraints on the designer; in fact, we've more frequently found that Drupal offers many possibilities that designers might never have thought of or knew were possible. Particularly in the early stages of a project, a designer might have one idea for solving a particular interface challenge that's difficult to implement in Drupal, but not even be aware that even cooler ways to solve the same problem already exist. Great designers are always seeking inspiration from new things, and Drupal brings so much to the table that it's difficult for many of our creative partners not to be excited about it.