Concept Design

You Got Style

Now that you’ve got all your flows worked out, who is doing what and how they are doing it, consensus on what is being built, your basic designs, and some of the content for the pages, it’s time to start working on the creative aspects of the SaaS system design.

Take note as to where this step is integrated throughout the process. It’s in the middle, not at the beginning. It’s ok to start out thinking about the systems graphics, but if you’re really digging into anything other than branding before this step, you’re doing it wrong. The system is all about saving time and getting through everything quickly and easily. Pretty pictures don’t make a difference -- ease of use, system speed, and functionality do.

All that said, now it’s time to talk about getting your messaging across and the pretty pictures that go along with that.

HiFi

If your UX designer hasn’t provided high fidelity designs that meet your branding needs prior to the front-end coder starting to work, now you need a web-designer or concept designer. This is often a different set of skills from your UX designer, although there is a lot of overlap and many UX designers started off as web designers or graphic designers before becoming UX designers. But as the field grows, more and more people start off with UX and don’t have the graphic design skills.

You’ll just want to be sure to understand what the skill set of each person on your team is, how much that is worth, and in what ways they are best utilized. Once again, a great example of why a group is better at building a SaaS system than an individual.