Design and Prototyping for Drupal

So What Did We Just Do Here?

At this point, you might be wondering why on earth I dragged you through all that. The reason is simple: in my experience, unless you’re working on a large team where every person has a distinct Thing to Do, this is how the process goes. While it’s tempting to put together a stack of wireframes, layouts, etc., and hand them off to developers to implement, the reality of working with any web-based framework is that certain things just work better if you go with the system rather than against it. Understanding the system by actually creating stuff within Drupal is one of the best ways to figure out how to work with it.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t innovate or create design that is truly beautiful. But the point of good design isn’t reinventing the wheel; it’s partially about incorporating design patterns that have been shown to work well, and partially about finding areas where you can improve an experience that isn’t optimal. Taking advantage of some of the defaults that Drupal gives you isn’t copping out: it’s smart design.