Project Management for Designers

One of the less used but nonetheless priceless functions within the Allworkedup system is the export function. This allows you to takeaway a project snapshot at anytime, including all uploaded designs and project files, aswell as comments neatly arranged as a spreadsheet. If you have a face to face meeting with a client where you can’t get online this could be realy useful.

When you click export, all the files and comments are quite simply packaged up into a zip file for you to download. You can do this at any time during the project – which makes project archiving simple and easy. This function allows you to easily export a project, archive it locally and delete the live project on Allworkedup. Remember  – you get 14 days to restore deleted projects – so there’s no need to fret.

The reason we built Allworkedup was simple – we were frustrated with the design process, inparticular a couple of elements of it:

• Managing client feedback
• Managing design versions
• Presenting designs quickly and consistently to clients

When we built the system initially it was hard coded – a page of designs with a simple navigation – but this became hard to manage so we saw the need to have an internal system that worked for us and for our clients. Allworkedup has grown out of our need to provide our clients with a consistent, easy to use interface for leaving feedback, managing design versions and bringing a project together.

There are other systems out there – but in our experience they don’t really achieve the aims of a designer or design agency effectively. We know that Allworkedup works, we have used it in one guise or another for many years and so we decided to release it to the design community at large.

The system is still growing, there are many functions that we want to add to enhance the experience, but we are happy that it will make the day to day life of any designer easier and will give your clients confidence in what they are looking at.

Go ahead and get started with a free account and feel free to leave feedback – we do actually listen!

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.