In any large project, interactive or building a home you should never start with out a detailed plan on what you need and how things work. Welcome to the functionality document. This is where the rubber meets the road and you are able to get down to specifics on how you want things will work, how the user will interact with what you create. A well laid plan will garnish you a smoother process and save you a great deal of time.
Resources
Document Statement
The first thing to put on the page is what you want the reader to get out of this document. If it’s just yourself this helps you focus by thinking in detail, before you code what you are getting into.
Description of the project
A one of two sentence statement of what the project is about, your elevator pitch.
Front-end functionality
A list of shared or common features such as image gallery, fade or slide? How do things work on your site? A sitemap is also common, how does information flow? In short, you need a detailed description of each page and every element on that page.
Back-end functionality
Detailed list of back end requirements such as database, CMS or code language like PHP or Ruby.
Wireframes
It is common to have a full set of wireframes (one for each page template) that accompany the functionality document. This offers a visual representation of the doc. and helps us understand spacial interactions between elements on each page.
Rules and Guidelines
- Start with the homepage
- Be as detailed as possible
- Don’t forget to detail animation and style
- Dream, but remember you will actually have to code this stuff!
- Make this document for humans to read
- It should be detailed enough that a developer would not even need to speak to you. Answer all questions