Adding A Design Process

If you are thinking about being a freelance consultant or already working as a consultant designing websites using WordPress, now is the time to specialize. The jig is up… the bubble has popped. We have exceeded full market saturation for consultants building websites with WP for small businesses. If you don’t plan to specialize and you are not a natural developer you are going to have a hard time. For this reason, I believe it is important for people identifying themselves more as a designer to specialize in our field as a designer. With examples, this talk represents my take on the why and the how of specializing as a designer, designing for WP websites/applications in today's business landscape.

Transcript

1. 1 Adding A Design Process Greg Douglas @thegregdouglas #WCOC #WPDesignprocess arcctrl.com/designprocess
2. Hi, I’m Greg and I am the co-founder of ARC(CTRL). We create powerful applications and plugins to help designers and developers produce their greatest work possible. I also co-organize Hollywood WordPress. arcctrl.com hollywoodwp.com Greg Douglas @thegregdouglas #WCOC #WPDesignprocess arcctrl.com/designprocess
3. 3 Discover Design Develop Deliver
4. 4 Discover Design Develop Deliver WHY? WHY?
6. 6 Stop Trying To Be A Unicorn
7. 7 Maybe It’s Time To Specialize
8. 8 Generalist Designer Designers that are wearing all the hats at their company and selling their design work as a service. A lot of child- theming going on at this level (Mostly these websites are built for the small business space)
9. 9 Pitfalls of Staying A Generalist There is little money in this space You will be spread too thin if you are working alone Working with small business clients at very low price points will bite you in the ass as you try to scale… unless of course you want to pivot your design business into a website maintenance business
10. 10 Specialist Designer The WP designers that transcend the small business space by going through the dip of being a generalist for a year or two but intentionally growing into a specialist g
11. 11 Leveling Up To Specialist Elevate your business, sales and marketing acumen to sell larger business clients Hire employees or consultants to do production work for you Partner with a developer who owns their own consulting firm to court larger clients together Take a full time design job for a large agency or corporation that uses WP and values having a designer that is separate from the developer
12. 12 Choosing To Specialize As A WP Designer
13. 13 UI Design is The Wheel To stay competitive as a modern designer you will need to bring more value to the table then just good UI skills.
14. 14 Design Specialist To Do List 1. Build some WP websites by yourself even if your long term goal is to focus on the design portion 2. Learn through the dip, take courses, and do self study on general WP knowledge 3. Attend WP meetups in your area, create alliances with developers, so you can play the role of designer on larger projects that your new team will bid on together NOTE Teaming up with others helps you bill more hours at a premium rate so ultimately both you and your development partners can make more money
15. 15 What is the Discovery/ Design Phase
16. 16 Discover Design Develop Deliver
17. 17 Discover Design Develop Deliver
18. 18 Tools of A Design Specialist
19. 19 WordPress Tools That Help You Offer/Sell Higher Value Solutions Advanced Custom Fields Buddy Press WooCommerce Easy Digital Downloads Gravity Forms Hooking into the WP-API and Other advanced development practices
20. UX/UI Trade Tools To Help You Offer More In The Discover & Design Phase Design Questionnaire User Personas With User Scenarios Vision/Project Board Flow Chart Style Guide Wireframes
21. Design Tool Resources Creative Market Design Cuts Adobe Design Inspiration Webdesigner Depot Canva Design School Behance UX For The Masses Additional Resources UX Prototyping Resources Axure Balsamiq Omnigraffle Style Guide/Brand Guidelines Issuu (Search: Brand Guidelines) ID - Identity Designed SG-90 Style Guide Creator Plugin arcctrl.com/designprocess
22. Example of Putting Our Design Tools Together exclusive.tylerdigital.com premiuminteractive.com/serenity
23. THANK YOU! Greg Douglas greg@arcctrl.com Greg Douglas @thegregdouglas #WCOC #WPDesignprocess arcctrl.com/designprocess