Our friends up north at ConceptShare have been working quite hard and responsively with us to put together the first milestone of something quite special and unique for the world of code production. Our clients are now able to use the innovative ConceptShare technology to provide design/creative briefs for their projects. Why is this significant? For a number of reasons:
- Creatives can now (contextually) mark up their designs instead of producing written documentation or countless pages of commented wire frames to communicate with front-end developers,
- Communication is vital and often time consuming in the user interface development process, ConceptShare streamlines this,
- The threaded comment facility of ConceptShare facilitates dialogue beautifully,
- Multiple stakeholders can now participate in the process of providing relevant input on a project, costs to produce polished and usable interfaces are dramatically reduced,
- The "risks" and "challenges" associated with outsourcing (or remote collaboration) are virtually destroyed thanks to the ability to "show and tell" using tools that are extremely easy to use
We’re really excited to have added this increased level of interaction for our clients. Communicating today’s Web 2.0 design, usability and user experience requirements to remote teams can finally feel just like sitting at the same desk with your own professional coding staff. This the first time in nearly 6 years that we can say that outsourcing for cutting edge code production has never been as accessible to freelancers, back-end developers, designers and agencies until now.
To get started:
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Click the “I will provide design brief in conceptshare” check box (shown in the figure below) in section 1 of our order form and we’ll automatically create a ConceptShare workspace for you and send along the details for you! In the future, those clients will ConceptShare accounts will be able to give us access to workspaces they work with so that we can directly jump into their workflow process.
The checkbox at the bottom of section 1 of the order form allows a ConceptShare workspace to be created for your project. - Next, add w3-markup.com and conceptshare.com domain names to your email account whitelists and check for email from our client area (support intranet) and also one from ConceptShare inviting you to the workspace created for you.
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Login to the ConceptShare system and upload your comps (or mockups or design treatments or whatever you like to call them), label them appropriately and begin adding your comments and notes to each comp.
Upload your comps to ConceptShare
ConceptShare sample comment -
When you’re done pop into the client area and let us know that you’ve finished providing your input
Login to the W3 MARKUP client intranet
View your ConceptShare design brief in the client intranet
Review your Design Brief in the lightbox window - Our staff will then review all of your comments and ask any questions via the client area if we have any questions.
That’s it! No more 10 MB Microsoft Word / Project / Power Point documents or rifling through layer sets to try to make clear overlays and comments in your PSD files directly!
For those new to ConceptShare, please make sure to have a look at their tutorials and other relevant info at their site. ConceptShare has also received a lot of love, you don’t have to take our word for it; the Smashing Magazine guys loved how easy it made our WordPress theme project. Give it a shot and let us help you improve your efficiency, reduce headaches and get more projects completed every month.
What’s next? We’ll be improving/increasing the level of communication and integration with the ConceptShare system to provide even more support for projects requiring more than design brief level of detail for projects; that is projects that require dialogue and consult from W3 MARKUP code production staff.
Have any questions, comments or suggestions for us? Please let us know by leaving a comment below!
By ConceptShare on your Desktop! | PSD to HTML CSS Blog on July 21st, 2008 at 10:22 am
[...] in the coming months are also focused on that goal. Not too long ago we spoke about the ConceptShare API and our integration of it for use with providing design briefs or to simplify communication in web [...]
By Vinothbabu on July 29th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Its really a very nice comcept. I will take this to my design head. Is it something like managing your project online and delivering mockups and trails to your clients.?
By Frederick Townes on July 29th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Really this is phase 1 of a 3 phase initiative. We simplify the outsourcing experience by leveraging ConceptShare to provide a show and tell overview of artwork for the coders. The next steps are to take advantage of the threaded comments and active workspaces already in use by clients. ConceptShare really shines for web application development projects as well.
By Jeff L on August 7th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
I think you’re using the word “intranet” where you really mean “extranet.”
Looks like an interesting integration, however.
By Frederick Townes on August 7th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Jeff, you’re right.
For the most part we get blank stares when we say extranet, so we say “client area intranet” or “private intranet” as those seem to be terms that get the “aha ok” response.