Vestal Design Website

The Problem

Vestal Design is a new design consulting firm specializing in product "ideation foundation" providing inexpensive, innovative, and rapid product design research and development. The company is comprised of young designers, looking to gain experience working on real design jobs. They are geographically dispersed and work together using advanced collaboration technology.

Vestal needed a web presence established quickly that would allow them to communicate with their existing clients and attract new ones. The individual members each have portfolio work of their own, but Vestal needed a portfolio of its own that spanned multiple disciplines.

The Process

The client had limited time for this project, so I set aside a 10-hour block to develop the entire site. It was a good chance to use some of the extreme programming methods I'd learned from the folks at 37signals in their "Building Basecamp" seminar.

First, I worked with Vestal's founders to determine what the site should do. We decided on six goals: show/prove competency; show breadth and depth (range of ability); show track record as a team; show competition record; act as Vestal's public face; and act as a recruiting tool. These goals would help make Vestal a viable contender for design contracts.

I next translated the concepts into paper prototypes (2.3 mb PDF) of web elements that could perform the desired actions. These prototypes were tested with both web-savvy and inexperienced users, and the most successful elements chosen for the final design.

To facilitate the need for client communication, I tied the static portfolio site to a custom Basecamp client extranet, which would allow Vestal designers to update clients on their project's progress.

Using XHTML and CSS, I coded the pages quickly and was able to launch it for all major browsers with almost no changes.

The Solution

The Vestal website launched after just 10 hours of design and development work (more was added by the members, who input content and project images). It has already become a heavily-used resource for current and prospective clients.

The "About Vestal" section contains both information about the team and about the process they use to design. Vestal concentrates on process, a central tenet in the coursework many of them did at Stanford. It helps orient clients to the firm and inform them about what to expect next.

Integration with Basecamp has become important not just for client relationships, but also for internal team communication. Designers share files, messages, and more in an interface integrated with the public website.

Finally, the portfolio displays information about each project as well as metadata describing the designers, skills, and resources involved in the work. Each portfolio item can be augmented with video and other multimedia to better describe the process. Even with such a short development time, the site meets its goals of facilitating current and building new client relationships.