When talking about web design & development, the word design encompasses many things. The most outwardly obvious reference refers to the look & feel of your web site: the colors, the font choices, and the placement of image choices. But the word design also means how well the content is organized or how the user interaction flows. All of these elements have to work together.
Content organization refers to the term information architecture. It is the skeleton, or backbone, of your web site. Without a strong, organized, & prevalent message, your web site will leave users confused and disoriented. They will not stick around to figure out what you are trying to say to them.
Get it up and running so everyone can see what it is that we are trying to build.
The same can be said about the user flow. When designing web solutions it is important to map out these interactions, build the interface quickly, then put it in front of users for testing & feedback. This concept is called rapid prototyping. The idea is that only the users can tell you what is going to work or not. By building quickly and getting faster feedback, we can avoid costly programming. Build the user interface first so everyone can see what it is that we are trying to build. Once all the user interface decisions are made, we can then move on to the heavy lifting called programming.
Geek Speak
I use JavaScript for functionality and fast prototyping. Rapid prototyping is binding the UI elements to data for quick scaling of the front end. Popular frameworks are AngularJS, NodeJS, and I am currently looking at Knockout.
