The first stage of our work involved planning out what we wanted the site to do. We did this a few weeks ago during a session involving lots of sticky notes, coloured dots and pieces of paper. The outcome (as you can see below) is a sheet of paper outlining what features we want to have and roughly what priority they are. In this case, there are two possible priorities, “essential” and “not essential”. Features like “registration form” are classed as essential, whereas “pretty charts showing complaint levels” are less important.

Once we had done this, we used it to produce a rough sitemap and list of features for the first release. This list of features is a subset of the ‘essential’ items we originally had. These are items we think we must have in order for the site to work – so it includes things such as database structure and user accounts. Once these items are done, everything else can be built ontop.

Our next stage has been to wireframe the site. This has again involved in reverting to the good old pen and paper to sketch out how parts of the site might look and how they will work. Now we have these, we can start building the functionality for the site.

We’ll keep updating you as the site progresses.