by Scott on June 17, 2007
Making of a Web App follows the design, development and deployment of a web application. This is the seventh article in the series. In this entry we pick a name for Synap Software’s new sales team collaboration application. Here’s the steps we followed:
- Wrote down the categories, benefits, and differences that describe the app.
- Used thesaurus.com to find words relating to these categories, benefits, and differences.
- Found word combinations that made sense, sounded right, and met all our name search criteria.
- Picked a few favorites and experimented (i.e. played around) with them.
- Picked a name, slept on it. Woke up and still liked it.
- Now we are sharing it for feedback.
Final Two Candidates
It came down to zPlaybook or PlaybookIQ. This blog entry shows how we arrived at those names. I’ll write more details on the in-progress logo development, but for now here is a sneak-peek.
Thanks to Michael McDerment
How to Name Your Company was the basis for our thorough product name selection method. We used different selection criteria, but similar methodology to that presented by Michael.
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Posted in Making of a web app, Web Application Design, Make a Web App | 19 trackbacks
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by Scott on June 14, 2007
In this, the sixth entry in the Making of a Web App series, we take a look at choosing a name. There are two steps: pick criteria and then pick a name that meets those criteria. In this entry we look at the first step: what makes a good web application name. Key points:
- Descriptive names are a wasted opportunity to be different and memorable.
- Emotive names rock.
- The first choice of name probably will not work, because:
- you need the .com.
- A chance to verbally repeat the name to someone is ok.
Everyone will have their own criteria for what makes a good web app name, depending on industry, target audience, and personal preferences. Here are the criteria I used for Synap Software’s sales process app.
A good web application product name is:
- short
- available as a .com
- associative
- emotive
- unique
- not functionally descriptive
- memorable
- ok to repeat
- one that you like and like to say
Let’s look at each of these criteria in more detail.
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Posted in Synap Software: Design Decisions, Making of a web app, Web Application Design, Make a Web App | 9 trackbacks
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by Scott on June 12, 2007
In this, the fifth entry in the Make a Web App series, we build the v1.0 feature list. The key points are:
- Write down a big list of features.
- Cut the list in half.
- Cut the list in half again.
- Version 1.0 will be only this 25% of the big list – these are the essential features.
Also, read on to find out how this approach can help good web application designers exceed user expectations.
How to Choose Features
So far, we have:
Now we’ll build our version 1.0 feature list.
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Posted in Simplicity, Making of a web app, Web Application Design, Make a Web App | 58 trackbacks
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by Scott on June 11, 2007
This is the fourth entry in the Making of a Web App series. Key points are:
- Use user profiles to reinforce understanding of the single activity release 1.0 is meant to support.
- Maintain focus and set expectations by distinguishing the activity the app supports from another closely-related, yet different, activity.
Ask a Project Manager about their greatest challenges and “scope creep” is sure to top the list. It’s easy to mentally expand scope to add that “one more thing”. Yet after “one more thing” is added another “just one more thing” comes up. This cycle can continue indefinately and v1.0 never arrives or arrives “late and over budget”. There are many techniques to keep this phrase from applying to your project. One is to state early what the project will not be.
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Posted in Making of a web app, Web Application Design, Make a Web App | 11 trackbacks
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by Scott on June 09, 2007
This is the third entry in the Making of a Web App series. Key points are:
- Write profiles of users’ roles, responsibilities, and needs
- Two profiles is good, three is borderline and four profiles indicates the scope for release 1.0 is too large.
- User profiles are important tools for design and scope decisions.
This series shares a process that designers, developers, and managers can use to design applications that delight users. Or, if you are a web-application user, this series can help you gain a better understanding of the workings of a software project.
Whether builder or user, I think you’ll find this series useful. If so, let me know by leaving comments below. If not, well, please also let me know by leaving complaints below. If you want to easily follow along, you can subscribe by email here.
Know Your Users
In the previous article I shared that this series’ subject app is a sales team collaboration system. This is a broad stroke description of the app’s domain. Now we need to ensure a good understanding of the users’ roles, responsibilities, and needs. We’ll do that by writing up short profiles describing fictitious people.
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Posted in Making of a web app, Web Application Design | 22 trackbacks
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