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Knectar.com redesign process: Part 2 - Site concept and a Question of Voice
by Chris Amato
Because the concept had been gestating for so long (over a year), the process of capturing the IA would be very smooth. Yet, something told me that it would be good to get a strong, fiercely independent second opinion. I had already run many of the idea past our lead developer, who was very receptive to them from an architectural (and technical) point of view, but my fear was that our orientation was overly technical, and thus biased towards our kind, at the expense of communicability to a broader (paying!) audience. Based on this hesitation, I gave my trusty colleague Val Nelson a call, a provider that specialized in content development, messaging, social media, and SEO.
This was a good move! Val was able to provide a critical second set of eyes, both on the details of the IA in the form of wire-frames, as the design mocks emerged. But essentially—as the voice was attempting to creep through. I had arrived at a design that while graphically strong (although not without issues), was clearly the work of a technical project manager. Through our work and review, she was able to reveal that there was a severe deficit in what we could call “humanity”. There was no humor, there was no soft-ness around the edges. Rather, I had created a an almost crystalline structure that on the one hand conveyed technical mastery, was sadly devoid of approachability, or a sense of the customer or her needs.
At this point, this voice is still not quite developed, but we have developed a decent concept of where it needs to go. I expect this voice to be something similar to the tone and feel and level of openness that is captured in this narrative. Plain spoken, accessible, genuine, and hopefully, interesting.
