Moving beyond a static design approval process

So, at 5.30am I was trying to get my kid to fall back asleep (and my swaddling skill’s have yet to improve past the point where he doesn’t get one arm loose), and in the process found myself waking up, wandering over to check my email and my reader. In it was a post recommended by boagworld from A Beautiful Web titled “Time to stop showing clients static design visuals“

The post brings up a few good points, the first one being:

Demonstrating our designs to clients as XHTML/CSS pages rather than as static Photoshop or Fireworks has streamlined our workflow and helped us to set and manage a client’s expectations better than ever before.

And as an example the post points the reader to http://forabeautifulweb.com/demo/2008/09/21/index.html.

I love the idea and agree with the author that a working mock up is extremely handy, and leaves a lot of un-answered questions, answered.

But for sites mock’s that are complicated or too time consuming to turn a static mock into a working build, how practical is this? And when the site requires some Ajax work, how far do you take it if the ajax has to integrate with a database?

Andy Clarke brings up some other good points about having a working mock up, read the full article at http://forabeautifulweb.com/blog/about/time_to_stop_showing_clients_static_design_visuals/

Tim Schoffelman of SilentGap