Communicating Design vision
If you've ever built a website for someone else, you've felt the murderous rage when that someone else can't communicate what they want. How can designers and non-designers work together to build a shared vision of the design?
Overview
You and your client sit down together to find concrete visual images—pieces of inspiration—that draw out the same emotional response your client wants for his website. You browse through websites, books, clip-art, fonts, cut out what you like and arrange it into a mood board. You organize the findings however you like, refining your vision, adding and removing as you go. Within a few hours, you have agreed not to a vague RFP with meaningless descriptives, but to a shared vision of the design.
Oh, and also, you’re thousands of miles apart and doing all this with a web application.
Demonstration
Deco is a real-time mood board application that helps designers and non-designers communicate. Using intuitive multi-touch gestures on touchscreens, or a mouse and keyboard on the desktop, it allows you to directly manipulate images and labels to create a mood-board for your design. While it looks like Flash, the entire application is HTML5 and JavaScript, so it runs *great* on the iPad simulator.
Watch it in action:
Want more?
The security and billing model isn't in place yet, and it only runs in Firefox 3.6, but I am looking for testers. Sign up for the beta on the website or email me personally for more information.