pate

start doing sketch first development (read all 4 entries…)
more sketches 4 years ago

I’ve just about sketched out all the screens for the first version of my new app. I’ve noticed three things:

1) Sketching out the screens has made the app’s design and (future) implementation very clear. I’m really looking forward to starting to write some tests and get coding.

2) The sketches have also made me realize where I’d skipped important functionality in my mental doodling. Making the changes now while things are ‘just pictures’ has lowered the cost of change dramatically.

3) It’s really hard to keep from sitting down laying out the DB tables and writing code—everything just looks so easy at this point.

Now I just need to talk to someone with some real design skills to walk through the design sketches with so that I don’t end up with angry fruit salad.

Feb 04, 2005, 08:21AM PST | 1 cheer


Comments:

Jamis Buck

Great work! I’m finding in my own exercises that I didn’t spend nearly enough time on the sketches. I’m reworking my HTML mockups like crazy, and although they still resemble my sketches, they certainly aren’t the same designs I imagined.

What has really helped is the feedback I’ve gotten from my wife on the mockups. I wish I’d shown her the sketches first and asked her what she thought—it might have saved me even more time.

Live and learn, I guess. The next batch of sketches I do will be much more closely scrutinized.

Feb 04, 2005, 10:50AM PST | Respond to this

Daniel Spils

Paper?

Are you literally sketching on paper. If so, great. I’ve found that being forced to draw my UI ideas on butcher paper here at the Co-op has helped tremendously when trying to think through or describe a feature to someone at the office. I often end up somewhere different than where I started or imagined I was going in my head. In short, committing it to paper really makes you think through the design, flow issues and such.

Feb 04, 2005, 11:52AM PST | Thread | Respond to this

pate

yes

I am drawing on paper—just a composition book kind of thing, but it seems to be working. The lines are enough to help keep me pretty aligned, but not so much that I’m getting hung up on exact placement (like I would with graph paper).

I’m currently doing my sketches on the Bus/Train into work, so a roll of butcher paper probably won’t cut it for me. ;)

Feb 04, 2005, 12:04PM PST | Thread | Respond to this

Daniel Spils

drawing is the important part

The only reason butcher paper is useful is because there’s plenty of room to get into it, make revisions, etc. Also, I’m really bad at drawing so having lots of room seems to help me draw vague symbols for different parts of a page and generally get my point across.

Just drawing (like you do) is so very helpful in my opinion. Good luck with the app!

Feb 04, 2005, 12:47PM PST | Respond to this

Eric Hodel

Functional tests

are really easy to do, and they make sure that the connections in your sketch are consistent in your real app.

Feb 04, 2005, 04:45PM PST | Respond to this


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