What kinds of sites should I focus on for a "new look and concept" redesign, and how much of a regular UX process should I follow?

Question

On Behance, I've seen many "new look and concept" redesigns such as this one for Facebook and this one for Wikipedia. The gist of one of these projects is that you ask yourself, "If I could redesign this site/app in any way I could, how would I do it?" Then you perform the redesign in that manner.

A prospect with a project that I really wanted turned me down about a month ago saying, essentially, that he wanted to do the redesign himself on his own time. He is a mostly back-end developer rather than a designer - and, for those of you who have read Inmates, hopefully not too much like Homo logicus to design something that works for perpetual intermediates! So I guess the first half of my question is, should I pursue a new look and concept redesign for this kind of site? Or am I calling his baby ugly if a conceptual redesign from me ever shows up?

The second half of my question: Should I treat a new look and concept redesign as a full UX project where I follow all of my normal processes? What would you include in one of these projects out of these:

• User interviews
• User surveys
• Card sorting tests
• Personas
• User requirements
• Wireframes
• Medium-/high-fidelity prototypes
• A/B tests
• Usability testing

Should I make the prototypes interactive or just show them as static images?

I'm also concerned about the cost of doing a new look and concept redesign properly, since I wouldn't be paid for a project like this and a lot of the steps here that involve users require a budget.

Answer 1

The key question to ask yourself, as with most things, is: why?

If your goal is to convince this particular prospect to reconsider and let you design his site, I would say don't bother. He can always reconsider.

In a more general case, ask yourself: why do I want to create a redesign?

• If this is something for your portfolio, you probably want to be thorough, since the point is to demonstrate that you know how to execute this process.
• If this is for a client, you should execute the process to the extent the client needs. They may just want exploratory ideas to get a feel for if they want to redesign their site, or they may want a carefully-crafted plan of action that they can take under immediate consideration. You can invest your own effort accordingly.
• If this is to explore a business or design concept for yourself, then you're just your own client. See above.
• If this is for fun, then obviously you should only invest as much into it as makes it fun for you.