Whiteboarding UI and workflow with Balsamiq

Sample Balsamiq UI Mockup

Before I started work on TallySpace I wanted to have a game plan for the UI and work flow.

My previous projects had always been small enough that I could plan as I went along.  Obviously this lead to many frustrating dead-ends and some backpedaling when my informal plans required major revision, but it worked.

Being that I wanted to do this project right, I wanted to at least plan out, in detail, the user interface of all of the pages.  One day I was listening to Net@Night and they were interviewing the founder of Balsamiq. He basically started the company on his own and was able to make $100K in his first year.  I liked his attitude and his story so I downloaded the demo. Read the rest »

Project Highlight: TallySpace

Since the primary purpose of this site is shameless self-promotion I figured I’d dive right in and highlight my currently (most) active project: TallySpace.com.

My wife is a teacher and for a few years was yearbook adviser at her school.  One day she was complaining about how they spend literally weeks out of the year counting standout votes.  For those not in “the biz” (which I wasn’t) those are the votes for things like “Best Hair” and “Most Likely to Succeed.”  Being the techie I am, I spent a night working up a really quick-and-dirty PHP/MySQL app that imported a list of her students and could basically let them do all the voting online.

We ran the vote that way last year and this year and despite a few bugs things went off nicely.  The site prints out a nice little results page for those authorized to view it and generally saves the yearbook class from having to waste a bunch of time counting votes.

I got so much positive feedback from the teachers that I decided to build it out to handle multiple schools and multiple vote types, including Prom/Homecoming votes and student goverment.  I’m currently about 60% done with the “Alpha” build and will be posting updates here.  This is the first really unique and massive project I’ve taken on myself so it’s been a learning experience.

If you’re an educator or know any who might be interested feel free to head over to TallySpace.com and sign up to receive notification once the Beta is opened up.  I’m not sure who I’m going to open it to yet but depending on the response I may just let in everybody who asks.