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Ethics for Web Designers: Triple Constraints of Project Management

Web Design is as much an art as it is a science. Every website is a project and is managed accordingly to the three constraints. If one of the three constraints changes the other two constraints must. Your client has to be apprised of this contractually and in clear communications throughout the project.

1. SCOPE - Size of the project, browser support, scope creep (expect a bit extra but what happens when the reasonable is exceeded)
2. TIME - Delivery date, adequate testing, media & text (who is doing what and by what date), delays / dependencies that affect the critical path
3. BUDGET - Development plus Additional services (hosting, media development, travel, updates, breakage etc)

Under Promise and Over deliver

It there is one bit of advice, it is to under promise and over deliver. It's a hallmark of successful people and organizations. How that's accomplished today is through equitable alliances and collaborations balancing both depth and breadth expertise. Commonly project managers provide the breadth, and designers and developers provide the depth. The quality that make up the most productive teams include: interdisciplinary respect, a foundation of excellent communication, and commitment to adhering to timelines.

Age of Identity

Ethical treatment of content and technology is a distinction central to our age of corporate branding as connected to postmodern posthuman tangibles about the interplay between real and the virtual - keep in mind just ten years ago they were separate.

While many people in the field understand this philosophically, they often lack the critical social judgment about the personal experience of this new type of disembodiment. While a website is communication from one to many, the newer social media are many to many, and as such individuals are applying the strategies of corporate branding and are consciously crafting identity.

Between Bleeding Edge, Good Enough, and the certain death Stagnation

Additionally, the training for web development will be lifelong, as the field's current scope is not stagnant. This concept presents a very practical dilemma for designers. Fortunately the realities of a commercial budget demand the designer find the "critical center". Those working independently will however grapple with the following issues: what makes it bleeding edge, trend versus new technology, social implications, what's new versus what's good or what works, etc.

Occupational Outlook

Web Designers have many professional options, and their careers (managed strategically) will take on many flavors. Entry level positions begin with coding, and possibly some design. Freelancers typically act as project managers, assembling a team to round out the technical needs of the project that cannot be provided by themselves. It's not unusual for a developer to sub contract a designer, and vica versa. Because Web Designer's focus is on trend development, they are an active agent of the global implementation of new technologies. Those with the most internal grit, contacts, and knowledge are primed to be part of the lucrative inventive process as a principal rather than employee.

© Melanie Stewart 2009 - 2014