What tips, tricks, and life hacks do you use to speed up your design process?
I’m a slow web designer and its affecting my business so I made a goal to streamline the design process. It currently takes me 1 month to finish a website and I want to get it down to 1 week. I’ve been identifying a lot of bad habits I have and decided to set some personal rules for myself:
No doom scrolling pages.
Focus on one section at a time.
Build top to bottom, left to right.
Optimize for Mobile as you build.
Use lowercase when naming classes.
Stuck? Jot it down and keep it pushing.
When in doubt, simplify or eliminate.
Spend 20% ideating and 80% building.
Use Pomodoro time management.
What are your favorite time-saving methods to speed up the design process?
Personally, with my ADHD, I rabbit hole on designs. I forget the rest of the world exists and I look up and 10 hours have gone by. If it isn’t quite right, I can’t think of anything else. Upside? 1 day websites. Downside? I have a family and dogs that need attention.
I strongly do not recommend rabbit holes. Pomodoro is a fantastic way to help. To help me speed up, I built a generic Style Guide that has all of my preferred Headings/Text Styles and classes so I don’t have to make things up on the fly and remember them. I have it shared on the Templates area, but welcome to take a look to see if it can maybe save you some of the start up time: Webflow - Style Guide
hi @Sam_Hoang while numerous online articles provide insights on accelerating the design process, here are some of my key recommendations:
Each website is tailored to specific client needs, and the best practices to expedite the design process include:
Understand the Client’s Needs: Invest time at the outset to thoroughly understand the client’s requirements and expectations. Multiple sessions may be necessary to gather all pertinent details, but this effort will streamline the overall process and ensure the final design aligns with the client’s goals.
Create a Design Brief: Develop a comprehensive design brief that outlines project requirements, objectives, and goals. This document acts as a roadmap, keeping the project focused and on track.
Develop Wireframes and Prototypes: Utilize wireframes and prototypes to visualize user flow and core functionality (e.g., what happens when a user clicks a button). These tools help identify and address potential issues early in the design process, optimizing user experience.
Conduct Research and Gather Inspiration: Research other websites, current design trends, and competitors to gather inspiration and generate new ideas. This helps in crafting innovative and relevant designs.
Leverage Design Tools and Resources: Utilize efficient design tools and resources such as Figma or Affinity Designer. These tools enhance your productivity and effectiveness in creating high-quality designs.
Prioritize Core Responsive Design: Focus on the core design and functionality of the website, ensuring it is responsive. Elements like animations and other advanced features can be added later.
Achieving faster and more efficient designs requires a deep understanding of design principles, typography, CSS for creating responsive designs, and HTML for structuring elements properly. Staying updated with the latest design trends and tools is crucial for skill enhancement and process efficiency.
Additionally, standard elements like buttons and form inputs often remain consistent across projects. Creating a personal library of these components and their variants allows for quick reuse in future projects, saving valuable time.
I personally do not like Pomodoro time management as when Im in focus I don’t want to take a break until I’m done what was my current goal as it can be only small step.
Good post and ideas! I’m similar. I find it super helpful to sketch layouts in procreate. It’s a good way to see the big picture, I can do it anytime anywhere. I’m always more successful and happier when building something that I’m looking at vs. starting from scratch in WF.
I had a hangup with wanting everything to be uniquely design, nothing standardized blah blah. All good, but many clients want the same sh*t because it’s safe. They simply want something that is nice, distinctly styled, yet the structure is very predictable. Knowing this up front allows me to reuse many things I’ve created but tweaked for a new site.
Some clients do want/need more customized, nontraditional layouts and this can be determined through good upfront meetings, nailing down the convention of a site (navigation type, expected layouts, unexpected, refined, raw, contemporary, traditional, etc)
What I find to be a bigger problem is client lag time, when compared to my design/production time. To complete a site in one week, will you require the client hand off 100% of the content? How does that work? Feel like my sites launch anywhere between 10weeks–2years
It varies by client. Usually, I have them hand over anything they want on the website as a definite and then source anything else I need. One site just told me “I nee a site” and gave me nothing else to work with. I sourced eeeeverything. But having the Style Guide saved me a lot of time. All my H1’s for instance were already at 5 REM and had a class of Heading - H1 with combo classes available for White and Centered, both. It allowed me to piece it together an item at a time without actually copy and pasting anything.
