Project Management for Designers

We spent a lot of time in the past 18 months looking at the interface and making decisions based on the user experience. The prototype was clunky, but it had some decent aspects of usability which we didn’t want to lose (mainly focused around the design viewer).

The new interface is slicker, faster to use and more intuitive – with the added benefit of being able to see all the functions you need from each page.

The dashboard

Having a central hub for each account is key to the success of most applications and successful dashboards show the user what they need to see – so that’s what we did. The dashboard gives you account information, project information and the latest comments. Everything you need to get started post login.

Project pages

The main difference with these pages is the sidebar available next to the project feed. This gives you access to info on all the designs, all the versions of those designs, all the members, all the project file attachments and (a really useful feature) all your other projects. This on-top of the quick nav under each design make the project interface simple and easy to navigate around an use.

The viewer

To us this is the key area on the site – it is the place that your designs get shown off to your clients (or maybe other audiences). We have not radically overhauled it or changed it dramatically – the prototype version served it’s purpose well – so why change it. We have simply added some functionality by allowing comments to be added and viewed without having to leave the page by way of a nice little pop up widget. We have also made it clearer which designs are archived versions by denoting them with an opaque yellow band. On the functional side the viewer can also be used to flick through previous versions of the design – not just all the latest versions as before.

User interaction

Part of the first system we liked was the ability to control some of the elements of the page at a user level. We have continued this theme making the feed collapsible and expandable, the project sidebar collapsible and expandable and the by only showing the latest designs within a project by default. It heightens the experience overcomes a few of those unusual – but annoying issues which come up either in lager projects or for heavy users.

We are really happy with the way the site looks and feels. We hope you share our experience – but if not please feedback to the team.

One of the most frustrating things that came out of the prototype research was not being able to see a design when adding a comment. We’ve overcome this by adding in two types of functionality:

• You can now add a comment from the design viewer without leaving the page. A comment box simply pops up and allows you to add the comment there and then.
• When adding a comment which relates to a design we have positioned the design preview pane next to the comment form so you can use it for reference.

On top of these features we also have some nice additions to the design viewer which allow you to see all the comments relating to that design version.

All in all we believe that the problem has been solved. Of course there will be more to come – adding comments to specific parts of the design is one thing that we will be looking at in earnest.

Although the prototype included a form of archiving it really needed to be looked at. The process now gives the project member the control to, at any point, grab an archive of the project. This includes all designs, project files and the comment feed (as a .csv file). The resultant download is a neatly packed ZIP with simply labeled folders and of course the feed spreadsheet.

The benefits to providing archiving like this are that you can take a record of the project to a face to face meeting where you are unlikely to have internet access or archive a project prior to deletion for your records (if it’s finished). I’m sure there are more uses out there – but these seemed to be the main ones.

Archive away!

One of the major improvements on the prototype is the new on-the-fly preview functionality. A scaled down preview pane offers up the design as it would appear in the browser as you upload the design, add the background colour or image and position the design in the browser window. This makes the process of uploading designs much easier and eradicates the need to view ‘live’ before being happy with the design presentation.

New to version 2 is the useful account management feature. This allows a subscriber to nominate account managers from their Allworkedup contact list. These users then have the ability to add projects (and manage the projects they create) on the subscriber’s behalf. This feature is available to all paid subscriptions (the free account only has a single project so it made no sense here). The account management feature is available from the ‘Account Managers’ option in your profile drop down.

With the release of version 2 comes user management at project level. You can now mange project members project by project. This replaces the user specific permissions from the prototype (version 1) and provides much more flexible management of projects. By default users are simply members with the exception of designers who inherit this permission from their profile (this seemed sensible).