Uncover the Internet » ideas

User Voice – Hear What Your Customers Are Saying

Jason Bean — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 15:31:00 +0000

I spend quite a bit of time developing websites and other applications for a variety of user audiences and groups. The challenge with developing any type of system or user interface is getting an accurate idea of what the user is experiencing and thinking for themselves. The UserVoice website provides the ability to get the answers you need.

The UserVoice website gives you the ability to listen to your customers and gather their input and thoughts on just about anything you would need.

On other projects we were left frustrated and overwhelmed when trying to grasp what our users really wanted. Unorganized inboxes and clogged ticket systems ruled the day. Forums were awash with duplication, user support was impossible to determine, and valuable ideas were lost in the shuffle.

UserVoice adds structure to feedback and reduces the overhead of an honest dialog with our users — It creates a market around good ideas so we get more quality than quantity.

If you’re looking for feedback, you need to expect more than just the feedback. You need to also be aware of how you’re going to organize all of that information and make changes and decisions based on that information.

Uncover your user’s feedback with UserVoice

Post from: Uncover the Internet

Balsamiq Has A Great Tool for Mockups

Jason Bean — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:45:58 +0000

Today at the Indianapolis Productivity Summit with Robby Slaughter I learned of a really cool website that let’s you do quick and casual mock-ups. The website is called Balsamiq and the example used in the session today was for mocking up a quick idea for a website with general blocks of content, navigation and image placeholders.

Snagit of Balsamiq website

The idea presented in the summit by Robby Slaughter was that part of the benefits of loose mockups of user-interfaces, websites and more is that when you keep it casual and quick you don’t get mired down in the details.

The balsamiq website from what I saw today gives you exactly that functionality and more.

Using Balsamiq Mockups feels like you are drawing, but it’s digital, so you can tweak and rearrange controls easily, and the end result is much cleaner. Teams can come up with a design and iterate over it in real-time in the course of a meeting.

The next time you need to get a visual of what something will look like, how exactly how you envision that user-interface working, go uncover Balsamiq for yourself and see if it doesn’t help you get your ideas communicated to others in a more clear and helpful manner than just words or your own efforts at business Pictionary on a cocktail napkin.

Post from: Uncover the Internet