Web App: Juvely

Luca asked me to get working on a couple of interfaces today and it made me think, how much really is left to do? Then I thought, why not write a blog post about it, it’ll probably help me realise what’s left to do also.

We have completed the majority of the main elements in the app. The main theme, ticket sections, the client area designs, most of the knowledge base and so on. So here’s a general idea of the main stuff we’ve yet to finish (or start in some cases).

Design/Development

• Staff - This section will allow the owners of each account to manage support staff they may have working for them. There will be some form of permissions based system, allowing the owner to restrict which individual staff member can do what.
• Account management -All the important options for the owner, billing/contact information, any settings which relate to the helpdesk as a whole. Although following the Getting Real idea, there will be a limited amount of settings.
• Knowledgebase - Finalise 1 of the interfaces for the knowledgebase in the usercenter.
• Marketing website - Finish the design get it all coded up.

Once we have completed the majority of the development we enjoy looking over things then redefining, and skimming down anything we feel we don’t need or makes the app feel bloated.

Business side of things

• Bank account - We’re not totally sure whats going to happen here as of yet, its definatly something we are going to start thinking about soon.
• Trademark - Trademark the logo/name, this probably will not happen until after launching the app.
• Finalise pricing plans - We have a very good idea of what each plan going to cost, we just need to finalise this.
• Marketing strategy - We need to define a marketing strategy for the short-term then eventually for the long-term.

But in all honesty we have done very little on the business side of things, Luca has also told me theres not really alot of useful information on getting a small business up and running out there.
Or you can take a look at our basecamp to-do list just to see what we’re upto…

As you can see there is still a while to go we hope to have a beta up and running by August, if you’d like to give us a try, throw us your email on the landing page. We’d love to hear you thoughts on how you break down your to-do lists or whether you use an alternative in getting things done!

The past year has been pretty amazing for me. I’ve learned so much in so little time, especially with university. With this post I hope to show you how my designing skills have progressed over the past year, for Juvely in particular.

Below is the first ever mock-up design. At the time I was completely chuffed with this interface. A year later not so much, however this was the starting point, I jumped into photoshop with the idea of keeping, it simple and friendly. I only designed the dashboard back then, as i was eager to get into coding the backend. I decided that it needed:

• Tabs
• Clear logo
• Simple live search box
• Some form of overview for certain areas (in this case tickets and notes)

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Although I had these points I had no real idea of what the main features of the app were going to be, knowing these details is important because in-order to design something you should have a good idea of what’s going to be included. Looking back on it now, I sit here and think what the.. although it did prove to play a very important role as it has set out the main design points.

Moving on to the second “version” of the design. As time went past I started to see downfalls in my masterpiece, colouring, fonts, positioning etc. After a few weeks of playing around, and getting a better feel for photoshop, I found that I could do so much better. Although not everyone has a major “creative streak”, I like to think I have a good idea of what looks good. After showing family and friends, asking for their feedback, it really opened my eyes. I wanted to make the design more aesthetically pleasing, whilst maintaining my main principles.

After showing people the final version 2 design, the feedback I received was brilliant. For a good few months I saw this as the final design. But me being me, In spare time I like to tinker with things. So things started to change. By this time I had met Luca, he liked the design. Although whilst playing around with other ideas, I was sure I could do better. The thing was, I really liked the navigation and the re-positioning of the logo. I decided it would be best to keep these how they are. The thing that was bugging me most was the content area. I felt that it needed to be defined more, rather than alot of white space. Also the “new & improved” left navigation/option/eye-saw box needed to go.

One thing I love when logging to apps I use is to see whats going on in my account - quickly. With no fuss or hassle, a nice simple overview giving me a general idea of whats going on and what I need to give attention to. I’m sure I can’t be the only one, so without further a do, I implemented it. The way tickets are listed has changed quite drastically, with the new spacing, icons etc, I felt that it firstly felt less cluttered and more readable, also the new highlighting technique (on hover, the colour of the priority) would achieve a much better affect on the user.

Obviously there have been other minor versions and changes, I felt these three examples would be best. So there we have it, the current dashboard interface, once the app launches into its beta phase you’ll be able to see all of the other content area interfaces, I would really love feedback, whether negative or positive.

Juvely is one of many app’s Luca and I plan to release in the future. Juvely is what I hope to be the foundation of a fantastic development future.

I’m home. After a delay, 2 buses over heating and around 9 hours of traveling I’m finally here. It’s quite late and I didn’t get alot of sleep last night, so I’m not going to rabble on too much. Tomorrow I hope to get stuck in with designing, also I’m going to do a post to show you the evolution of the Juvely interfaces from when I started them over a year ago, I’ll also try to explain why I made the changes.

Over the next week or so I hope to get most of the interfaces done, this will mean that Luca can get on with more programming as soon as he is back at the end of June.