On the surface, not much has changed with Sketch over the past couple of months. The alpha version of Sketch is still available to be tried out online. Some of the web companies we’ve talked with about Sketch are already using this alpha version to work with their clients on planning sites. Even though there are many features yet to be added, they’re finding that the ease of use outweighs the restricted feature set.

Behind the scenes, we’ve been conducting research to confirm that Sketch will meet the needs of a significant proportion of web companies and their clients. We’ve talked to as many Wellington companies as we can, and we’re now doing the same in Auckland.

Results so far confirm that the relationship between web designer and client is often strained, and suffers from poor communication; that content is often not provided until very late in the site development process; and that, when it is provided, this often results in late, and therefore expensive, changes being made to the site structure. A tool that:

• makes it easy for designers and clients to communicate and collaborate
• makes it easy to align the expectations of web designer and client, and
• leads to early agreement on site structure and content

is likely to find a ready market if it’s priced correctly.

Our research is continuing, but we’ve gained enough data already to start moving ahead with a beta version of Sketch, built around the set of minimum functions that our research has told us Sketch needs.

We know that we can’t give everyone everything they want, all at once. We’re not even going to try! We’d rather start with something relatively small, something that’s going to give web designers and clients a huge amount of help just by itself, and make sure we’ve got that right. Then we’ll start adding to it bit by bit, testing usefulness with every step.

We figure this is a good way to build something that web designers and their clients are truly going to enjoy using.

So, a Sketch beta is on the drawing board!