Wayfinding Workshops Revisited
Before I joined Culture Foundry as director of growth, I oversaw communications, marketing, and sales departments for commercial and nonprofit organizations located in Kentucky and Texas. One common responsibility in those jobs was website management, and given my background, I approach my current role as I originally approached Culture Foundry years ago, with the eyes, ears, and questions of a client. Culture Foundry was the website design and development agency of record for two of my previous employers. Both organizations had e-commerce sites that amplified brands, delivered information, and drove revenue, so when we engaged Culture Foundry for ongoing design and development support, we weren’t starting from scratch.
As such, I had never experienced the process of beginning at square one on a website build. I had never needed a digital agency’s help to create an information architecture, navigation plan, and page layouts to support the way users needed to use our sites. Those decisions had already been made.
Decisions about ways to constantly evolve those sites usually came down to money. Like most sales-mar-comm directors, I needed to stretch every web development dollar I could finagle out of Finance, and the thought of spending time or money to “plan before doing” meant stretching my limited budgets even further. So I was always asking Culture Foundry project managers the same question: “How quickly can we get to the ‘design and build’ phase?” Here’s how I now answer that question for myself and for prospective clients. But first, an important anecdote.
