Marvel Internet Group blog

Now I had a list of features I thought would be useful, I set about sketching the interface. I would use Photoshop or Paint to do this, but I have no skill in either, so I went and found my trusty pen and paper – which, as illustrated, I have no skills with either.

Before I post the scans, I want to reiterate the importance of sketching as early on in the planning stage as possible:

• Sketches force you to consider how your features can work together.
• Even if you are not a designer, the vision is still yours and you are the BEST person to illustrate it. Getting a designer in at this stage will only cost time and money.
• Sketches show you how people will use your app long before any real time is spent on it.
• If you can not fit an interface screen onto a single A4 page, chances are it will not fit on a computer monitor.
• Sketches show you the features you have planned and don’t need as well as the ones you need and haven’t planned.

After a quick run through of the features I decided on earlier, I set about drawing! Here are some of the resulting sketches - click to enlarge:

Sketch 1 – Dashboard with menu system

Sketch 2 – Create / edit / delete staff

Sketch 3 – Options when a roster cell is clicked

Sketch 4 – Manage roster and Preference page

All up there was about 10 sketches. This stage took me almost 5hours, but gave me a true understanding on what was involved, and enough motivation to move forward to the next step, ‘Setting up the project’.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 27th, 2009 at 8:58 pm and is filed under justrosters.com, marvelig. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.