Creativity for Web Developers, Continued

This is probably the trickiest stage of the process. If you're not careful, all your hard-won creativity can be erased in a few minutes' weeding. In this stage, you'll need to go back to your original criteria and goals and use them to evaluate ideas. If an idea doesn't meet the criteria you specified at the beginning of the project, you'll need to scrap it. If it does meet the criteria, you'll need to think through implementation issues, as well as weigh it against competing ideas.

How do you tell what ideas have the greatest merit? Unfortunately, it's almost entirely subjective. Your project criteria are a good place to start, but that may still leave you with several ideas or approaches to choose from. You may want to run a focus group or interview users to find out whether one idea is more promising than others.

Don't be afraid of risk, especially in this business. It's easy to let risk be the deciding factor. Low risk does not necessarily mean safety, however. Sometimes, it's a high risk idea that ensures a project's -- or a company's -- future.

Creativity is an ongoing process, and needs to be fostered along. High pressure, tight timelines, and failure to communicate with clients can all put this process in jeopardy. Plan for creativity just as you would for other essential tasks, and innovation will not be a lucky event. Instead, it will be your way of working.

Jennifer Fleming is an Anchor producer and the author of the upcoming book Web Navigation: Designing the User Experience (O'Reilly, 1998). She runs Square Circle Solutions, a Boston-based web firm specializing in user experience consulting and idea generation.

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