Eames & Boot Strapping on the Web

A phased website is a great way to get what you need fast and then enhance your marketing or communication program over time. Using analytics and other measurement - you can adapt to the needs of your site's users as well as your shifting business needs. Personally, I am a student of Charles and Ray Eames- the design visionaries that helped shape the aesthetics of America during the middle of the 20th century.  Reading about their work and how their studio functioned- has inspired my own work and methods for tackling it. The Eames were versitile designers that focused on quality and achieved that quality through trial and error.  Process was critical during that journey.  Each iteration improved on the last and pushed the engineers further to the final goal.   The result was innovation in furniture, construction, media and education.  Below see the famous Powers of Ten video, sponsored by IBM and produced by the Eames.

The Eames had a great philosophy to get the core functionality of a design working and then form the design around achieving the details desired:

"Design is the appropriate combination of materials in order to solve a problem. The details are not the details. They make the design." - Charles Eames

This kind of process translates beautifully to the web.  With strategic use of content managment systems and application development your website can be designed around your core goals and then enhanced over time in response to market developments.  Dave winer described bootstrapping in November of 2000:

Doug Engelbart, who envisioned much that we're doing now, emphasizes the importance of bootstrapping. When engineers build a suspension bridge, first they draw a thin cable across the body of water. Then they use that cable to hoist a larger one. Then they use both cables to pull a third, and eventually create a thick cable of intertwined wires that you can drive a truck across (actually hundreds of trucks).

That's a bootstrap. First you take a step you know is on the path, learn from it, and use it to lift up the next level. And unlike the designer of a suspension bridge, we must be more flexible, because the pace of innovation in our art is so rapid.

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On the web we can consider these kinds of processes in a new light.  In that you can meet your business needs and continue to enhance your communciation efforts over time.  Iterating on the web can be a seamless experience where content and interaction is tweaked and media is incorporated over time.  If you have a challenge that needs to evolve, we can work with you to map that development path.  Rather than waiting months for lofty web strategy that may or may not enhance ROI- approach the task in layers developing core functionality and then responding to needs based on measurement and shifting markets.  The incremental process allows us to have the same trial and error as Eames but in small increments that are layered for your success.