This was exciting for me — because I realized how much value there is in the design process that I was previously missing. I really had to think about what was important, cliche as it sounds. Here are some key take aways and feature cuts:

The notion of a “user” was quickly eliminated. Spend Stack will focus on being a great shopping list type of experience and less about sharing those lists with other people

The sort button wouldn’t fit at the top, as I realized the navigation bar would need a back button and a “settings” icon for the current list

Speaking of — the wireframe had no back button at all! Whoops — enjoying looking at the same list forever 🙈

The toolbar at the bottom stayed close to the wireframe, as did the table cells themselves

Already, the process of using Sketch and the wireframe really saved me, possibly, hundreds of hours. Think about it — creating a user and social based app takes time. And I realized — people might not even need this. Or want it.

Plus — I think my design sense might be slightly improving already. Here is a screen shot of what Spend Stack looks like today, with the most objectively hideous theme that’s available:

😱😱😱😱😱

Early Feedback

From reading up on design, the product creation process and more — there is always one constant: Getting feedback quickly. Make those mistakes first, and get them fixed before they ship. It won’t be perfect — but it will be better than what it was.

It’s also one thing I’ve been learning at my job over at Buffer, the team over there is excellent at getting in touch with customers and really feeling out what their needs are, what’s going right with the product and more importantly what’s going wrong.

The Facebook post I made requesting feedback

So, right away I posted the Sketch progress I’d made on my Facebook page and got some insanely helpful insight.

Right away, people found some things that I hadn’t even thought of. And lucky for me, some of my friends from Buffer (Andy, our iOS lead that I work directly with and Joel, our C.E.O.) were nice enough to leave some great thoughts

Here are some things people had mentioned:

The indention of the table cells feels a bit off — perhaps dropping that might help

Moving the thumbnails and the icon representing a note/comment to the right of the item would make it easier to scan your list

Is adding a picture or media even necessary at all? Especially in light of the social aspect being dropped?

The section headers could be more prominent

The dot and slash next to the section headers might be unnecessary, especially if the user creates their own “labels” — they’ll already know what those colors mean

Showing “tax $x.xx” on every single table cell is likely redundant

What is the difference between “Add” and “Quick Add” and are they both needed? Am I hitting option saturation?

What does the icon on the left of “Add Item” do?

Is the total at the top with tax included? And, when it’s expanded — is it the base price + tax — or is it already figured in?

All of that useful information — from one picture! It was a great learning experience, and it made me feel a bit crazy that I hadn’t been taking a similar approach for my side projects.

It sounds so incredibly obvious, right? Ask people about your designs! But, straight up — I’d just not done it before. And if I want to give my side projects I put out with Dreaming In Binary the love they deserve, it’s got to be part of my workflow.

Final Thoughts

The next chapter in the series will follow the rest of my Sketch design, I need to flesh out the entirety of the wireframe. My goal is to have the whole M.V.P. in Sketch, which already makes me incredibly relieved to actually build it. I know what I’ll be getting myself into this time!

My wife using Spend Stack at the grocery store this weekend

Aside from that, my wife and I have been using Spend Stack a lot more. This has been a trip down memory lane, as we had forgotten how useful it actually is — even with all of its flaws and mistakes it currently wears like a badge of honor.

It’s incredibly motivating, as I can’t wait to finally make it what I feel it should have always been, an insanely easy to use shopping list app that tracks your total with tax figured in.

Thanks for reading — and feel free to sound off. Is there something I’m doing totally wrong in my design process? Any thoughts on ways to improve the Sketch mock up? I’m all ears!