IDM Site Design- Self Reflection

In yesterdays lesson, we had to redesign a site and make it more professional. We were given a live brief and a set time to accomplish such a task in. This put pressure on completing it on time, but that is more realistic and will make me more efficient in the long run.
I started on the sitemap and I seem to struggle with this part of the design process because I never know how in depth it is supposed to be, some websites have huge sitemaps and it feels daunting. Next was the wireframing. I immediately had an idea in my head. The logo for this IDM site was a cube design and I had the idea of having the cube fold out revealing a menu for the site.
When we had finished we were asked to show what we had done to the group. The main concern with my designs was that they were done on lined A4 paper. Layout paper is something I have to remember to bring next time. We were asked to sleep on it and the next day reflect on what we did. So here is my reflection:

I will start with the sitemaps, as I said before I am still trying to get my head around them. I understand the theory but putting it into practice was more difficult. I am trying to decide which way to portray the sitemaps because there are many different ways to do it. This is why I made a few different map:

This is my first attempt at the sitemap, I was thinking of the best way to organise the pages, trying to find some logical pattern. But I didn't like how it looked so I went on to r-design it:

The idea behind this sitemap was to put every link on the main page to minimise the amount of clicking needed to reach the page people want. This sitemap fed into my thoughts on the wireframe. Next time I make a sitemap I will probably use the Balsamiq software to create a neater design. I think it will allow me to understand them a bit better. Next I had a look at the wireframes I had done:

I will review it from top to bottom. I wanted the logo to fold out into links as I've said before, I found it a bit challenging to express my thought into this wireframe and it ended up looking a bit messy. I still think the concept would work very well and I can understand this wireframe but the idea is that others can understand it so I can articulate what they want in the site. Yet again, I think I would use this as a draft for myself and then do the polished wireframe in software like Balsamiq. 

After the wireframe, I went on to a more realised version with colour:

Whilst making this, I tried to stick to the column concept, however I didn't follow the usual 3 column structure too closely just to mix it up a bit and make it fresh. I distributed the sections and adopted the tile design, I imagine to make the most out of each page and minimise loading between links. Therefore I kept the job search in the main page as well as the info of the site and social link etc.

The big problem with these designs is using lined paper and A4 instead of A3. Next time I won't used lined paper.