Recently, we’ve been surprised by the number of clients who, while in the design review stage of our methodology, registered disappointment that we were not demonstrating the Flash animation that would appear in the final product. In most cases, we were showing them three or more basic home page designs and explaining what would happen as the screen builds or the mouse moves.
In some cases, we even provided a “screen shot view” of the build, or a storyboard view that showed static images of the screens in various stages. But our clients –- perhaps enthusiastically envisioning a more finished product or thinking of what they’ve seen in our portfolio –- still wanted to know “why it doesn’t move.”
In some ways, we’re flattered that the animations in our finished sites are so professional as to appear to be easy to do. The truth is, however, that each IMA-produced animation takes hours of intensive work to create. Like the musical score of a motion picture, it must integrate seamlessly with site’s functionality and design. This means that they can’t be started until we receive final approval on the static elements of the design.
Any design project has specific stages it has to go through, many of them iterative in nature. One of these stages is gathering requirements –- in terms of colors, type of images, layout preferences, tone, etc. The next stage – and a very demanding one -– is taking those requirements and interpreting them into several original designs. This interpretation synthesizes the requirements with our experience, knowledge of the client’s asthetic sense, knowledge of the market, and knowledge of the technical realm, to create highly usable and very attractive designs. We try to make these three or so designs as distinctive as possible, to give the client a range of very different designs from which to choose. We know, however, in some cases the final choice will consist of elements of all of the designs. We also know that many clients don’t know what they want -– or don’t want -– until we try a few different versions. Fine-tuning can be time consuming, but ultimately the end product is one they're happy with.
To give even a rough-cut feel for movement at the design stage would end up adding hours to the schedule –- resulting in wasted time and unnecessary costs on the project. Your designs “don’t move” until we’re sure you will love them. By the time you do, animation production is informed by what we’ve learned about you and your preferences -– meaning that it can be a more targeted and efficient process.
