Redesign: Reasons, wants, needs and why

Before starting any project, it helps to know why you’re doing it.

Your reasons can big business related (get more clients) or personal (learn a new skill). It can big (make a million dollars) or small (to experiment with a new technique)

Some places calls these requirements or goals. But stealing from Simon Sinek, I like to call them my why.

Your why will lead you

If you ever come across a difficult decision throughout your project, ask yourself ‘Is what I’m doing serving my why?’. You’ll be able to make much more informed decisions this way. This works in a professional setting too. When someone makes a request for something that seems a little strange, just ask ‘why?’ You’ll start a conversation that might lead to new insights. And if there isn’t a good reason for the request, then you just prevented unnecessary work.

My reasons why

For my new site, I came up with three main reasons that I wanted to meet:

• Make the site more personal and less businessy
• To work on a project to test my design skills.
• I wanted a place to share and document my experiences, cool things I come across, my recommendations and what I’ve learnt.

All business, no party

My current site felt a little too businessy. I approached it as a tool to get clients and build my personal brand. I ended up burning out from trying to create the ‘right’ content for it and ended up posting nothing at all.

This time I want the site to be more me. I want this site to be a place where I can I write and share without the pressure of making part of a perfect content marketing strategy. I want to write interesting content that others can learn from and connect with.

‘If you want to learn to ride a bike, don’t watch a video, don’t read a book’ – Seth Godin

A great quote from marketing mastermind Seth Godin from his podcast, Akimbo (which definitely worth a listening to).

I’ve always been a fan of great design and decided I wanted to be as good as the designers that I admire. Over the years I have signed up to lots of design courses but hardly put in the practice after going through them. But to get good at something you need to it. And to do it, you need a project. And a redesign of my site is as good a project as any.

Sharing to teach and to learn

I’ve tried writing a few times now. And I’ve always dropped it after the first few months. I’m not totally sure why but maybe it was because I tried too hard to make it personal, I kept trying to write content to get leads (which I never got) instead of just writing to share.

I want this site to be an outlet for me but I also want to write content that people can learn and get inspired by.

I’m hoping with a fresh redesign, less focus on generating leads and more focus on purely sharing, I’ll be able to keep at it for a long time.

Those are my reasons why and throughout this whole project I will keep thinking back to them. If I come across any difficult decision, I will ask myself what best serves my why. And then I’ll make the right choice.