Posts Tagged ‘creative process’

Listy.us is live, still a work in progress

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

For those that have been following my work by means other than my blog (twitter, facebook), you already know that my big project, www.listy.us, is alive and kicking. I’ve been meaning to write an actual blog post about it for some time, since it would seem I forgot to do that back in September when the site actually launched. It’s improved a lot since then, I think.

Listy.us is a AJAXified table-based list making application. You create a list, edit it by clicking fields and entering your data, and it’s updated as you tab from item to item. It’s open-ended enough that you can use it for just about any kind of list you want to make. I designed Listy.us as an application that I would personally enjoy using, and I do use it. My user profile shows some of the lists I’ve made on the site so far – the ones I’ve marked as public, at least.

There have been a lot of features cut out in order to get the application on the internet and getting feedback. User groups, templates, and hypertemplates — templates with extra functionality such as pulling down extra data from outside sources — are all still on the list of “things to put back in ASAP.”

There are a lot of different things in this project to write about, so I’m going to try and break it up into a lot of smaller blog posts over the next couple weeks. What do you want to hear about? The marketing? Writing the editor javascript? The decision to remove advertising? Design revisions? Bits and pieces of Zend Framework code used on the backend?

Next post, I think I’ll share how I’m using some Zend Framework components to create a mail templating system for new user emails, comment notifications, and the like.

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3 Disciplines that Shape My Work

Sunday, March 22nd, 2009

I’m at an interesting place where I’m influenced by several different “disciplines” of design, and I think that’ll show in my work. There’s a lot of resonance between these; While the first two are pretty obvious, the third may not be. I’ll compact the first two into one for brevity:

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How to Wrap Your Head Around a Project

Friday, March 20th, 2009

I was making fairly slow progress on my primary project. I headed up to stay with my folks for a couple days and try out a new dentist in the area (I detest driving more than 15 minutes if I’m not going to be staying there for at least 24 hours). When I was packing for a couple days, I made a conscious decision to leave my laptop at home. All I brought was a sketchbook that I keep some of my notes in (ruled notebooks are the pits and remind me of school).

Between just being unplugged for a few days and a few discussions with my Dad who knows a crapload more about databases and project management than I, I think I’ve mostly got my head wrapped around this project. I got about 3 pages of notes down, and I write densely. I think when I head home tomorrow, I’ll be ready to start working on the app. There’s still a little bit of brainstorming left to do, but for the most part, I’m there.

So, if you ever find yourself stuck on a project, try unplugging for a few days. Don’t stop working, but go to paper and pencil if you can. If you aren’t working in computers, do something else to change your perspective; A shift in practice/view tends to lead to new approaches or solutions you hadn’t thought of before. Probably just because you aren’t following a pattern anymore and your brain has to start improvising more readily.

At least, it worked for me. Thought I’d share.

Got another project underway as well. I’m not really going to be talking about these projects directly until they’re at least alpha ready.

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