App School launch: TaskFive

We weren’t bluffing. We met with James Kennedy on Monday to hear his idea for a web application. It’s Friday now, and we’re looking at the implementation. This isn’t a prototype, or a proof of concept. This is a real web application, open for business from today. Here’s how we did it.

Discovery

We had a discovery workshop with James on Monday morning. We’ve already told you about the application, and it’s core principle of Five things a day. We listened to his pitch, and once we agreed on the requirements, we got to work.

Sketching out interfaces

This application is all about letting you & your colleagues share a worksheet where everyone can see what progress other people are making. We focussed on the task view, and went through several different views & orientations.

Wireframes

Once we had decided on one, I got to work designing wireframes in Omnigraffle. At this stage I add proper labels, content and the like, to ensure we’re wireframing in the real world. We started talking about page interactions, exploring what made sense and what was feasible. James had been using a spreadsheet, so we looked at Excel and replicated the features that seemed necessary (drag&drop, tabbing , double click to edit).

Coding

Paul & Dave got busy deciding domain models, configuring our server (donated by Hosting 365), and writing the basics of the system. Dave moved onto the backend work straight away, while Paul wrote the jQuery to give our application all the interactive goodness it needs.

Visual design

Eoghan worked through a few different design ideas on Monday & Tuesday before settling on a strong clean concept. This served as our design target for the week, and we nailed it.

Launch

Today, after testing some of the last components to be added (paypal integration, sms & email notifications etc), we looked back at our original 2 user stories. At 6pm we stepped through each of the scenarios and everything worked! We called James to get the all clear, and voila! The idea we first heard about on Monday is live on Friday. The site is now live at TaskFive.com.

We’re Contrast. We do web apps.