Since the summer of 2000, Newfangled has promoted the grayscreen prototyping methodology as a highly effective means of communicating the subtle yet crucial aspects of a site's structure, content, and functionality during the very early stages of site development. We have built tools that help us create grayscreen prototypes quickly, and have written a book called Client vs. Developer Wars that further documents this process. Grayscreening continues to be the cornerstone of all of our web development projects. However, in the past year the grayscreen process has evolved into a complete web development methodology that extends beyond grayscreen prototyping. By bringing together grayscreen prototyping and the NewfangledCMS (our Content Management System) we have brought the grayscreen process to an even higher level of efficiency and effectiveness. The story of a recent project for the New England Gas Company provides a great example of how grayscreening overcomes the challenges facing many web development projects and introduces new benefits.


New England Gas Company approached Newfangled Web Factory to create a new website that would integrate four separate sites (ProvGas.com, FallRiverGas.com, nattlegas.com, ValleyResources.com) under one new company name. This presented a major information design challenge. The new website would need to combine and organize the content from all four sites into a single logical structure and present state-specific information as well as other information that varied by city and town within two New England states. Along with these information design requirements, the new site would need to be visually redesigned and include a number of new features. In total the new site would contain roughly 100 individual pages.

Compounding the challenge of the project was the reality that more than ten people representing various departments at New England Gas Company needed to have input into the project as it progressed. The greatest challenge by far, however, was its aggressive launch schedule. The project, which began on July 8th, 2002 would need to be finished for a "go live" date of August 1st, 2002. That allotted just 19 working days to complete the project, from start to finish.   next >