Sharpies smell good.
This is work: We get various field agents, technical propellor-heads and sharply dressed marketing folks together in a room and spout off a bunch of ideas. I stand there at the wall and play Pictionary and write everything down, discounting nothing but inserting things like “big can of worms” from time to time.
I take those scribbles, snap some photos and throw them away so I can sit down and transcribe them into maps and visual concepts for testing. It’s always due yesterday, but it’s almost rote how we’ll go through a half dozen iterations before all raised flags are removed and we can begin evaluating how it can be described for production/coding.
The beauty of functional specifications is often lost in this fast pace of web development, but its value can’t be undermined. I get passionate about this stuff and I suppose the fretful look on my face makes the deadline-centric types agreeable. Carefully integrating soft and fuzzy ad-space seems to satiate.
It’s a process – and on days when I get to do it, I dig it.
Then I go home, or to a hotel.
If I’m lucky, I won’t hear Devo’s “Whip it” being bastardized for a Swiffer® commercial.