Design Workflows for Rails

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Design Workflows Rails John W. Long Twitter: @johnwlong for

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Rails + Ruby I

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Designer / Developer

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@thesassway Latest news on Sass + Compass

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Feedback & Support

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Design Workflows Rails for

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1. Passionate Users 2. Fewer Support Issues 3. Easier to Program 4. Competitive 5. Conversions 6. It’s fun! Why Design?

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1. Users First 2. Guides Users 3. Avoids Surprises 4. Delights 5. Lightweight 6. Compromises Good Design

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Business Design Development Product Design .

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1. No Design 2. Prettify This 3. Big Upfront Design 4. Iterative Design Approaches

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Development Iterative Design +

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Think Big Build Small

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Build the smallest thing possible that will validate or invalidate your idea.

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Core Idea

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Get Feedback (End Users + $$ People)

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What do you think about this? Would you actually pay money for this? How much? How can we make this better? Should we remove anything?

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Iterate

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Maximize Learning

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1. An Idea 2. An Assertion 3. An Experiment 4. Customer Feedback Customer Development

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User Stories Iterative Workflow Customer Feedback Design/Prototyping Development

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User Stories

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Allow a [type of user] to do [action] Example 1

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Allow a regular user to do [action] Example 1

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Allow a regular user to post a status update Example 1

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Allow a regular user to post a status update when they are signed in. Example 1

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Allow a user to view details about another user Example 2

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Allow a regular user to view an activity stream generated from other users interactions across the system Example 3

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Allow a regular user to keep track of what his friends are doing on our site Example 3

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User Stories 1. Start here 2. Loose definitions / big picture 3. Keep team focused on end user 4. Wonderful with clients 5. Single most important tool

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http://cukes.info/

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Like a Pirate Prototyping

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Whiteboards

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USERNAME PASSWORD SIGN

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Whiteboards • Great for brainstorming with customers • Great for illustrating flow • Lightweight • Hard to take with you

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Wireframes

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Paper Prototypes

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What

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Balsamiq Mockups http://balsamiq.com/

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Wireframes • Moderately lightweight • Capture more detail • Easy to showoff to customers and stakeholders • Anyone can build them

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Hi-Fi Mockups

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Hi-Fi Mockups • One step from HTML • Help establish look & feel (also tone) • Typically require professional help • Most potential for error

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HTML Prototypes

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HTML Prototypes • Allow you to test flow • Can be improved over time • Great for client and customer conversations • Can leveraged for actual application (1/4 effort; makes estimating a cinch)

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Functional Prototypes

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Functional Prototypes • Great for refining algorithms, user interactions, gestures, anything that is complex • Also great for client and customer conversations • Don’t need to be written in/for target language or platform • May also be leveraged for the actual application

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Designers Rails Tools for

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http://get-serve.com

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Demo

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Serve • Made for designers • Rails newbies are right at home • Keeps designers out of the app • Can become unwieldy with iterative design/dev cycles http://get-serve.com

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Showoff http://github.com/adamlogic/showoff

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• Rails Plugin (direct integration) • Creates a “/mockups” route • Use app layouts/partials/etc • Great for iterative development http://github.com/adamlogic/showoff Showoff

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Other Options • Nesta • Middleman • StaticMatic? • Brochure

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Rails❤ Designers?

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The Challenge What can we do to make it easier for designers to get started with Rails?