Digital Products
Building a New Website for Gurusoft Report
Bringing an established design direction to life through building a new website for Gurusoft Report.
- WORKPLACE
- CONTEXT
- TEAM
- DURATION
- YEAR
What needed to be solved.
Gurusoft Report's existing website was built on an early version of Gurusoft's platform. Moving to a newer system meant rebuilding the website from the ground up.
When I joined, the visual direction, page structures and much of the content had already been developed. The task was therefore not to start over, but to understand the work that had already been done and help bring it into the new system.
What I learned.
Joining during implementation gave me a different starting point. I was new to the project, while others had already spent considerable time understanding the product and shaping its direction.
This meant finding a balance between trusting the work that had already been done and taking the time to understand the reasoning behind it.
Understand before making
Keep a fresh perspective
Understand while making
What I decided.
Rather than treating the existing designs as something to simply reproduce, I used them as the foundation for implementation.
Build on what exists
Question with purpose
Adapt through implementation
Why I decided it.
Understand before changing
Why
What it meant
Design within the system
Why
What it meant
Know when to leave things alone
Why
What it meant
What I designed.
I translated the established design direction into the finished website.
The work involved building pages from existing sketches, adapting layouts and content where needed, and developing alternative solutions when designs could not be implemented directly.
I also used CSS to make visual adjustments within the platform.
What changed.
For Gurusoft Report
The new website gives current and potential customers a clearer way to navigate the product and find the information they are looking for.
Moving to the newer platform also makes the website easier to maintain and update, creating better conditions for continuously improving the user experience.
For me
The project gave me practical experience in taking design sketches into a functioning website.
More importantly, it showed me how design decisions, content and technical possibilities influence each other throughout implementation.
The interface is the result. Understanding is the work.
This project made the principle of understanding before making particularly relevant.
Joining an ongoing project taught me that a fresh perspective is most useful when it starts with curiosity. The work already done should be trusted, but not followed blindly. Understanding why decisions were made makes it possible to know when to build on them, when to question them and when to simply leave them alone.
Understanding does not stop when making begins. Building something can reveal new information, and that information should be allowed to influence the work.