Blogalyzer Analytics Software

Problem

Building a product with remote developers, requires a clear & detailed design.

The MVP for Blogalyzer was a Google Sheets add-on. We didn't require much design because the front-end was a spreadsheet. Building a custom web application however, required more planning and design choices.
 

Main focus was on: intuitive user experience & very clear instructions for remote developers.

First steps

Copy & paste to test and pitch your ideas

To show what I wanted to create, I made a first sketch (in Sketch App :)) using copy & paste. Making a first sketch helps you think about what to put where, and which elements you'll need. I used the result to pitch the idea and to brief the freelance designer I found.
 

Hiring a freelance designer

Tip: to find a designer experienced in analytics tools, I scanned design websites for an analytics competition and chose the winner, which I contacted directly. Working with a designer is a lot of back and forth, but being careful to not kill his or her creative process.

How to translate designs into responsive front-end code.

Different screen sizes, dynamic controls, unexpected user data lengths,... --> you'll need a lot of communication with the dev team and quick decisions.

While the developers are translating the design into live code, you'll encounter a lot of unexpected challenges.

A different approach is to design the entire application precisely with every menu & every user flow, which I recommend if you're working with a big team and the software specifications are fixed. In this case, however, we wanted to move fast & break things. (I also didn't have the budget for a professional designer :))