This stage focuses on the feeling, emotion, and character.

It’s a very unique type of design process, mainly because it just has to ‘feel right’.

EMOTIONS

The moment a visitor arrives at your site, he or she will feel SOMETHING.  In this step, we consider what emotions we want the visitors to feel while browsing the site.  Do we want the visitor to feel smart or ignorant? Safe or scared? Do we want to instill a sense of calm or urgency?  As we dig into this we will arrive at important emotional distinctions.

COMPARISONS

Together, we then look at other websites that are already in existence, each of which may represent specific design elements that are either desirable or undesirable.  A good rule of thumb is to have at least twelve other websites from which our aesthetic design takes inspiration.

VERSIONS

From here, I’ll apply these various aesthetic notions to the wireframe that was developed in the previous stage.

There is no set number of revisions to this aesthetic approach, but just like any creative process, the best version may not become evident in the first version.  At the same time, it’s important to realize when additional revisions start to hurt, rather than help, the design.