How Collaboration Produces Creative Web Design

When we work together we work better.

And there are proper facts to back this up. A 2014 Stamford study found that collaboration improves engagement and the ability to stick to a task while simultaneously reducing fatigue and emotional burnout. That’s because there are actually few tasks we can do well on our own. Even if the project is a solo endeavour, at one point or another we all find ourselves either talking to another person or using someone else’s expertise to get the job done.

And that’s no different for web design.  Take a back-end coder, they are stereotypically known for working (quite happily) on their own. But when they work on a website project, their code tends to be part of a bigger picture. A coder will end up talking to a designer, marketeer, project manager or even a salesperson while getting their part completed. That’s because producing good quality web design requires every element of a website to fit together as part of one thought-through website journey, and never in silo.

Creative Cogs

Web design gets the best results when everyone involved is treated like a crucial cog in the creative wheel. Every person is just as important as the other and should be part of the creative process from the very start. Involving a copywriter once all the designs have been created or a graphic designer once the content user journeys have been mapped out, will mean you are losing out on valuable insights from experts in their fields.

Think about it this way, everyone can bring something to the table, and when you create a collaborative space where that is encouraged, creativity and productivity comes pouring out. And involving everyone in the collaboration process from the get-go gives each person access to cross-department learning, which helps with employee motivation and skill building.

Web designers can learn from programmers, copywriters from marketing and software engineers from UX specialists. In fact, they can all potentially learn from each other. And when all your team is growing their knowledge base, they naturally become more versatile, empowered and in turn more willing to become highly skilled team members in the long run.

And even if you are using an external company to create a new website, the same collaboration ethos can be applied to both internal and external teams working on the project. High levels of collaboration and communication also side steps potential misunderstandings that can take on a life of their own during the creative process. A wrong UX decision here and an off-the-wall graphic there can be a hop skip and a jump to messy website design. When an internal and external team are working together, collaboration helps to cement similar goals and viewpoints which improves consistency and satisfaction on both sides before the website is ready to go online.

Paint Me a Picture

The ultimate goal for web design is to create seamless website end user experience. Just like a masterpiece, every brush stroke matters and is not done in one sitting or even from one point of inspiration. Getting different people who have varied sets of skills to work together and putting the right processes in place will create more user-friendly, creative and unique web design.

And changing how you collaborate within your business won’t just change your web design output or even team, it will have a ripple effect across your entire organisation. It will help your teams to rethink idea generation and work out how to deliver more creative results as one unified and productive team.

If you liked this blog post, check out our other posts about web design, creativity and our beloved Manchester. And if you think you might be ready for a bit of web design fairy dust, have a look at our web design services to see if there is anything we do that could help you and your team out.