"And another thing...the current site is in German"
John Armitage · 2003
Between 1996 and 2001, large international Internet consulting firms built many Web sites and applications. These firms combined the disciplines of business strategy, technology and design into one service offering, capable of creating businesses and launching business initiatives using the Internet.This paper portrays a project completed by one of these companies, Viant Corporation, in 2001, at a time when they were starting to suffer from a severe economic downturn. It portrays the projectís design process in detail, and how it was affected both by Viantís culture and business model, and the projectís economic context.A team of mostly non-designer consultants adopted new roles, design processes, tools, and work environments to fulfill the role of interaction designers. The case serves both as a vivid example of adapting design processes and standards to adverse circumstances, and as a historical snapshot of a business context that may never reappear.