But people haven't changed. Just because we're logging on doesn't mean we've tuned out and stopped caring about what things look like that's an asinine assumption. Design conveys many things and in this case, it needed to convey the basics of these products a sense of architecture and a sense of quality. Since the market for these products is especially aware of design, the site's design was especially important. Even though we'd agreed on an idea, I still asked Jack lots of questions about his business, his customers, and what kind of feeling he wanted the site to convey.
Emotion is one of the most important, and yet least discussed, aspects of design.
Then, when you've created a design, ask people how it makes them feel. Sometimes it's subtle, and everyone will give you a slightly different answer but look at the overall effect your design has on viewers. I created graphic comps in CorelXara . Using a graphics program can be a fast way to experiment with the look of a site. But you have to be careful, because graphics programs will allow you to do things that HTML can't.