Boundaries can be a bittersweet thing. They keep cattle inside of a confined area and not wandering the road. They can also inhibit animals from roaming free and happy. Boundaries keep us from coloring outside the lines - both figuratively and literally - but what if I want more real estate when putting crayon to paper? It's a balance of independence and quality control.
This bittersweetness holds especially true in the realm of web design. Designers, as artists, enjoy developing within an environment that bends with vision yet keeps things in line. We want to explore the space and output something really stimulating. We're aware, however, that boundaries are critical for maintaining a healthy information architecture and high conversion.
Discussing this balance is, to no one's surprise, a hot-button issue among designers who are new to NationBuilder. The inherent fear of construction in unfamiliar territory strikes up questions about artistic sacrifices. At the same time, we want to paint on a canvas that tells us when we've "run out of room" from a general user's standpoint.
I know, I know, that all sounds a bit dramatic...
When you're conjuring mockups that will make even the stodgiest of users click "Join!" though, the last thing you want to hit is red tape with your design implementation. So what should designers know when it comes to working in the NationBuilder environment?
The back-end partner to your front-end creation
This notion reiterates the school of thought behind designing the NationBuilder way. As the poster illustrates, the "Theme" and "People" layers are fused together, resulting in measurable action. As a designer, the Theme layer is your creative realm. Leaving the People layer to us allows you to focus on the cosmetics within the client-facing layer.
My favorite part of any conversation about designing on NationBuilder is that, visually, the sky is the limit. It's always a party whenever that mockup involves a straightforward implementation minus the wishful thinking. Some may see working within native functionality as a hinderance, but developing with the system instead of against it will reduce brittleness, hacks, and get customers thinking differently about how they manage their ecosystem.
Frameworks are your friend
Even if you prefer starting with a clean editor slate, there is no denying that working with a pre-baked code architecture can help expedite deliverables. It's easy to critique a framework and rant about its shortcomings (myself included). It's much tougher, however, to chop through the palms and actually learn the idiosyncrasies.
We've also removed that learning aspect for a lot of designers with the wiring in of Bootstrap's framework. It was awesome to see such a warm reception to this rollout - further proving how widely adopted the use of frameworks really are. Let's be honest though, it mostly comes down to understanding how the HTML/CSS files are fragmented and knowing the variable consistencies. Once that wall is knocked down, your design capacity is endless.
Design anything, then tie it all together
The "conceivability" stage is probably the most challenging, and sometimes drab, step of the design process. It's the time when we have to apply pragmatism to imagination - like telling a child they can't jump to the moon from a trampoline in the backyard because the sheer lack of oxygen alone would make it impossible. Way to ruin the fun, Sir Surly.
Using a platform and framework, on the other hand, to carry out the creative challenge establishes the conceivability early on. This can make the checks and balances much easier to manage considering you're wrapping a design around a systematic operation that already works by default. The design can remain malleable and quickly adjust to constraints, which proves far more difficult when attempting to sync functionality with an overly-ambitious design.
We should feel comfortable embracing boundaries in design and seeing them as an asset, not a hurdle. We'll be able to quickly iterate on concepts and get to the final deliverable, all while having the independence to flesh out the brewing ideas.
