Sketching pages with colleagues

We tried a new way of coming up with ideas for web pages today.

The normal process is:

1. A colleague tells us they want a new section on the website
2. The colleague email various ideas and bits of text
3. The web team meets the colleague and agrees an outline for the new section
4. The web team (all 2 of us) start sketching

Today we were at stage 4 when I had the no doubt not entirely original idea of including the colleague:

It worked really well. I expect colleagues feel a lot more involved when you explain why you’re doing x and not doing y – especially when they can see why.

You can sketch ideas around any content they’ve provided up front, while they’ll have more incentive to provide text and images if they can understand its purpose within a design.

Finally, you’ll hopefully save time and disagreement in the future because when you present your first HTML page it won’t be a complete surprise to your colleague.