Recently, I have worked to make a website for an architecture company and I just think of many similar things between the websites and the apartments. I summarize the whole progress to 5 steps, and you will see how similar they are.
Step 1: The designer will make a draft for the lay-out of website, so do the architect, he draw a draft for the construction of the apartment. The difference is that the designer does on Photoshop, meanwhile, the architecture works on AutoCad.
Step 2: Both of them need to discuss with the customer and get his/her aprrove for their drafts.
Step 3: Then the customer will require the functions (such as contact form, shopping cart ….) for the website, and the owner of the apartment will suggest infrastructure (such as electronic lines, network, TV cable …. ). In this step, depend on the requirement, the functions of the website and the infrastructure of the house could be very complex. The web designer, at this time needs a team to complete, and the architect needs to ask the 3rd party or sub-contractor. They are still similar, right ?
Step 4: Till now, everything seems to be OK but no, both of the designer and architect will receive the complaints, additional requirements from their customers such as AJAX enhancements, PayPal integrated for websites and Wireless networking, intelligence devices for constructions. Yup, the most difficult time is here, in some case, the web developer need to rebuild the whole website to satisfy the new requirements and the architecture need to demolish some area of the construction also. Both of them would get stress and tired during this period.
Step 5: Yeah, they could finalize in this step and receive the payments from the customers or not (just kidding !).
