Less is More | TrAvid Blog

11 Jan, 2010

Getting Real Notes on Words

Posted by: Jerry In: Uncategorized

Words

There’s Nothing Functional about a Functional Spec

  • Don’t write a functional specifications document
  • Functional specs are fantasies

  • Functional specs are about appeasement

  • make everyone feel involved
  • Functional specs only lead to an illusion of agreement
    • people interpret words differently
  • Functional specs force you to make the most important decisions when you have the least information
  • Functional specs lead to feature overload
    • easy to add bullet points
  • Functional specs don’t let you evolve, change,and reassess

    • Specs don’t deal with the reality that once you start building something, everything changes.
  • Write a one page story about what the app needs to do.

  • Follow the process
    • paper sketch
    • html
    • code
  • Stay flexible

Don’t Do Dead Documents

  • Eliminate unnecessary paperwork
    • Build, don’t write.
    • Documents that live separately from your application are worthless.

Tell Me a Quick Story

  • Write stories, not details

Use Real Words

  • Insert actual text instead of lorem ipsum
  • You need real copy to know
    • how long certain fields should be
    • how tables will expand or contract
    • what your app truly looks like

Personify Your Product

  • What is your product’s personality type?
    • Think of your product as a person. What type of person do you want it to be?

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About

My name is Jerry Tian. I am the founder of TrAvid, an integrated web service for event organizers. I currently live in Vancouver, Canada. As a solo web entrepreneur, I spent more than one year bootstrapping my startup. This blog is about the lessons I learned along the way. You can follow me on twitter, and if you are in Vancouver, make sure to check out my meetup groups:

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