Form and function

One of my first hard lessons as a designer happened during a website design project for a local non-profit organization.

Knowing nothing else but their business name and that they wanted something “fresh,” I went to work designing, pulling inspiration from the latest Dribbble homepage and whatever was trending on my Pinterest boards at the time.

But something wasn’t quite right.

I started wondering if maybe we should ask the employees what content they think should be featured on the homepage. We had heard in an early discussion how challenging it was for their donors to access certain forms and application information.

My manager at the time responded with: “It doesn’t matter. People just go to websites to browse anyways.”

And I knew, fundamentally, how wrong this was.

We never delivered the finished site, because none of us took the time to align everyone on the following:

1. Who we were designing for
2. What problem were we trying to solve

Two of the most essential cornerstones of any creative brief were completely absent from our work.

So we ended up with a lot of fluff.

All that to say, yes, design should (objectively) look good.

But if it’s doesn’t function…

Then what’s the point?