I was the first full-time employee at BrightGauge. The initial team consisted of and outsourced development group and an ad agency. I was tasked with designing and developing the marketing site for BrightGauge. The original site was built inside of a proprietary CMS, which made it very hard to manage.

After a lot of research on open source platforms, I decided to build the site using WordPress. I was slightly familiar with it, but I definitely didn’t have extensive knowledge of it. This was my first big task I was determined to knock it out of the park. There was no room for anything short of perfect.

I started from scratch. The first thing I did was research design trends and patterns. Next, I created the sitemap. After multiple iterations, my boss signed off on it. I then provided him with an outline of what content would be needed for the site. Since I wasn’t a WordPress guru, I started with a template. I used it for the base structure of the site and then started designing the wireframes.

I originally started with wireframes, but my boss was having a hard time visualizing the big picture. I moved into Photoshop. I designed around 10 different concepts and reviewed them with my boss. I did this to offer a variety of options. We took a little from here, a little from there, iterated again and came up with a really solid design. From there, I went right into development.