Process Flow Chart For Digital Creative
I was hired as the interactive creative director at Tierney to help their traditional agency place a stake in the digital space. Upon my first few weeks there it became clear that while they had a process for creating traditional creative such as print, radio and television, there wasn’t a real set process for a digital project.
They were making the fundamental mistake of trying to apply the same process / timeline and scope of work of a traditional project to digital projects. An example of this would be just using copy from a print ad for a banner ad, instead of actually writing for the interactive experience that has a whole new set of parameters.
In order to help them understand the importance of a digital process and how if it is used can not only help set milestones, assign ownership and manage client expectations but it also would help eliminate scope creep by being able to accurately track the process of a projects. This would allow account management to see where the project was, what resources were being used and if there were any hold ups, who was responsible.
I created the first process map to show all the steps that need to occur in order for a project to get done just from a creative standpoint. In other words, I didn’t overlay any other department’s responsibilities except for those of project management. I wanted to show just how complicated the process could be. One of the many misconceptions about digital work is that since it is created on a computer the solutions should come at processor speed. This is not true (at least not until the robot uprising)
After presenting my process map to various departments, I was asked to refine it by layering in how other departments, such as account, would factor in to the process. I was given feedback from each of the main departments and set to work on incorporating the feedback into the process and maintaining a logical and productive process, which I’ve shown below.
TAGS: Creative Output
