andrewducker | Interesting Links for 04-06-2012

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andrewducker

Crossposts: http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/2727162.html

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From:

bart-calendar.livejournal.com

I love that the number 3 biggest selling singles act in the UK is someone completely unknown in America.

From:

andrewducker

Counts yourselves lucky!

From:

bart-calendar.livejournal.com

Oh. I do!

Hey did you see my tech question in the other post?

If you don't feel comfortable answering I understand.

From:

andrewducker

I don't feel qualified, but from what I've heard Balsamiq pride themselves on simplicity.

They had a demo accessible from their front page, and the video makes it look very easy.

From:

bart-calendar.livejournal.com

Thanks!

The video does look easy - I'm just always worried that videos can lie.

But I'm glad to hear that Balsamiq has a reputation for being simple. I honestly know nothing about them and their wikipedia page wasn't much help.

From:

andrewducker

I remember the buzz around them on Hacker News when they first appeared. Everyone was very enthusiastic about being able to do simple mockups for customers easily.

From:

bart-calendar.livejournal.com

Cool.

This is an app development company and they want to be able to show potential clients how an app would look and function.

So all they really need are sketches of where buttons and stuff would go on a mobile screen.

She suspects that doing so would be fairly simple - since it's not like mocking up an entire website - you only have a limited amount of space to work with.

She and I are just slightly nervous that it would be more difficult than it seems - particularly since the client is willing to pay a lot of money to get it done.

From:

channelpenguin.livejournal.com

At my last contract they used Balsamiq mockups for all the screens - seemed pretty good to me, though I never used it myself beyond 'playing'. It is good for what I'd call *functional* UI mocking, not for *design* mocking - i.e. if you want to wow with Teh Pretty, it is not the tool, but it sounds like they want the former in any case.

Getting a good, useable and good-looking layout is NOT trivial and it's not down to what tool you use how hard it is. It's down to knowledge/experience of user interface design and if the co. is willing to pay for that then they are actually preety sensible, and bodes well (to my mind). There are various guides based on research which can be very helpful - I recall reading on when desigining a touch screen app a few years back. Look them up, there's can be really good stuff there about how people use interfaces and what the conventions are on button positioning etc. (e.g. most people are right handed, and hate to "cross" the screen, so general buttons should favour a position on the right [with obvious exceptions of course...back paging, rewinding etc.])

From:

channelpenguin.livejournal.com

But I'd REALLY really pin down whether they, or their client, are expecting 'pretty'. If they are using the mocks as selling tool, it really depends upon the audience for that demo (demos) whether a functional mockup will do the job (the more technical, the more acceptable, the more enduser/management, the less so). If they *have* the job, it is more likely to be fine than if they have competition.... people are very influenced by the design look, whether they know so or not. Might be an idea to include one screen with designed graphics so they can see what the real buttons will look like - but maybe they have a design team that will do that for them and they are planning to include that.

Edited Date: 2012-06-05 08:32 am (UTC)