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Trello: Simple Project Management Tool

I have a couple developers working on the Jables app.  They showed me an application that I think is pretty cool.  It’s Trello.  Trello is “is a collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards.  In one glance, Trello tells you what’s being worked on, who’s worked on what, and where something is in a process.  Made in New York City by Fog Creek Software.”  So basically each board has three columns: To Do, Doing, and Done.  You create “cards” which act like post-it notes.  On the card you write a task to be completed.  You can assign one or more people to it and add a deadline date.  You can also add color, but I haven’t used that that much.  Once work has started on a task, you can move it to the Doing column.  And obviously once it is completed, you move it to the Done column.  It is a simple but effective project management tool.  And best of all, it is free.

You can also have multiple boards.  So we have 4 boards which are iOS Mobile App, Android Mobile App, Backend, and General.  Each board has a log so you can see who moved or edited what.

It seems that pretty much all the functionality I would want is free.  There is a Business Class version that is $5 per month per user or $45 per year per user.  It lists the additional functionality as easily manage boards and members, Google Apps integration, additional and custom board background, additional and custom stickers, 250MB attachments, one-click bulk data export in CSV and JSON, bulk export history, and an observer role.  I think if we had more people and were juggling more that would be useful.

Tools To Make A Killer Prototype

I think the prototype process is the first step to creating a great site.  It is critical if you are making a custom site.  It helps you think through the user experience and answer things like “what happens if I click on this.”  There are a ton of tools out there.  The method I used to create a prototype was really easy and created a prototype so good that people often think the site is already built when they look at the prototype.  I think there are basically three steps to prototyping.  Some people just do one but I think three is really helpful for the site creator if you do all three.  If you go through each of these steps, not only will you give the developer solid PSDs, but he can see how they interact with each other.

Step One: Mockup Wireframe

This step is where you think through UX and UI.  Some people think you should keep this step as free from design and work only on function.  I think the real answer is somewhere in the middle.  You can use tools like Balsamiq to make a really simple wireframe, but I really liked using Axure.  At $289, it is much more expensive than Balsamiq’s $79, but you can use photos and make the wireframe look really close to what you think the final version should look like.  You can also see what a shitty designer you are.  You can see my wireframe here.  After step two, I am embarrassed to even show it, but it really goes to show what a good designer can do.

Step Two: Design with PSDs

This step is the step that is going to make the site look good.  And you are crazy if you don’t hire a good designer for this.  To put “good” in perspective, I paid a designer $75/hour.  If you don’t know where to find designers, Dribbble is a great resource.  This should get you PSDs for each page.  If you look at a source like oDesk, you will see most front end developers are building from PSDs.  Getting the front end built from PSDs is really cheap, too.  In my opinion, spend the money for a good designer and save money on the front end.  You can find good front end developers for about $10 an hour if you are comfortable with going overseas.  And if they have good PSDs they will know exactly what to do.

Step Three: Make a Final Prototype

This is the fun step.  Once you have all the PSDs, you can upload them to InVision.  There is a free version, but it is worth it to pay for the Pro version while working on the prototype with the back end developers.  With the pro version, you can download and host the prototype.  You can see my prototype here.  You can link all the pages together so a developer can see what page they go to when they click on a link.  It begins to break down if you have a function.  For instance, if you a list that you sort and filter.  It will, however, let the developer see the bulk of links between pages.

Conclusion

After using this process for the main site, I used these three steps to make a prototype for the mobile app, and I couldn’t believe how quick the process was.  I think the mobile prototype is amazing.  I would be comfortable showing that to anyone.

 

Clone Scripts

I was at a networking event last night and was telling someone that I wanted to build something similar to Yelp.  His first question was, “I wonder if there is a clone script for that?”  What the hell is a clone script?  It basically turns a CMS like Drupal or WordPress into a popular site.  Want your own Twitter?  Get a Twitter Script.  Want your own Facebook?  There are almost a dozen Facebook clone scripts.  There are sites like clonescripts.com that host hundreds of sites.  It seems like if there is a popular site, there is a clone script for it.  And most in PHP.

Fight for $15

My first business was a convenience store that had two fast food franchises inside.  So most of my employees worked for low wages.  We didn’t pay minimum wage, but we were close.  It was hard working next to these people seeing their daily struggle.  Some were trying to support a family on that.  To be honest, I was paying myself $35,000 and that seemed hard to live on.  I can’t even imagine, really, what a life on minimum wage must be like.  I don’t want to think about it.  But that is a reality for many.  Today, May 15, people around the world fought for a living wage.  In the US it was $15.

About the same time I was running that store I heard people talking about a “living wage”.  The concept is this: at a minimum, we should pay a wage that people can realistically live on because, many argue, you cannot really live on minimum wage.  I think the rising tide lifts all ships, as they say.  I think by paying more, the whole economy improves.  Of course, there are a lot of people against this and I would suggest they either are executives or stock holders in the companies that have made huge returns off of low wage and high margin businesses.  Companies like WalMart, McDonalds, Burger King, Target, and Dominos to name a few.  I think it is dumfounding that executives, making salaries in the millions, say they can’t afford to pay employees more.  Donald Thompson, the CEO of McDonalds makes a salary (not including stock benefits) of $9.6 million.  In half of one day he makes more than most of his employees in an entire year.

In this Forbes article How Much Would A Big Mac Cost If McDonald’s Workers Were Paid $15 Per Hour? they site a model done by Arnobio Morelix, a student at the University of Kansas School of Business.  He suggests the cost of a Big Mac would go from $3.99 to $4.67, a 68 cent or 17% increase if McDonald’s were to raise their worker’s wages to $15.  A Bic Mac meal would go from $5.69 to $6.66, a $1.17 or 20% increase.  In Morgan Spurlock’s Inside Man episode on Unions they quote a UC Berkley Labor Center study that if WalMart were to pay an average of $12 up from $8.81 it would raise prices about 1%.  To me, that seems like a small price to pay considering these people would make $31,200 a year.

Some things to think about:

  • Every time you spend money at businesses like McDonald’s, WalMart, Burger King, Target, and Dominos, you are supporting the exploitation of the poor.
  • According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 3.55 million people in the US make minimum wage or less.  About 1%.  In Texas 455 thousand people make minimum wage or less.  About 1.7%.  The number of people making minimum wage or less in Texas is almost double what it is in the rest of the country.
  • $80 billion is spent on the United States federal food stamps program.  “Just in fast food, 52 percent of families are enrolled in one or more public assistance programs—like food stamps and medicaid—compared  with 25 percent of the workforce as a whole.” Says Fight for 15.
  • Raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 will decrease enrollment in the food stamp program as much as 7.5% to 8.7% according to a study by the Center for American Progress.

So for that reason I don’t shop at Walmart or McDonald’s.  Dominos or Taco Bell.  If given the choice between Home Depot and and independent, I’ll go to the independent.  I do my best to shop at places I think pay fair pay.  I can’t always, but I do my best.  I wish there was more to do.

Jables

January 10th was my last day at Sabre after over 9 years.  Almost a quarter of my life.  I was actually grateful to be laid off because it came with a severance.  I say grateful because I had been meeting with Charles Adetiloye to partner and develop Jables with.  The layoff just maybe moved things along faster.  We applied to Tech Wildcatters and didn’t get in.  Soon after they were named one of the top 15 best accelerators in the US by TechCrunch.  Their program director said they had over 600 applicants and they only had 15 slots, which made them harder to get into than an Ivy League school.  So I felt a little better.  We ended up officing at The DEC.  The DEC is an incubator and co location space with a litany of programs, services, and speakers.  They host 1 Million Cups of Coffee every Wednesday morning.  They have a keg of local beer on tap and host a happy hour each Wednesday afternoon.  They have lots of cool whiteboard sessions.  Lots of mentors eager to help.  I have only been here a week and am learning of new stuff all the time.

The race is on.  I only have a few months of severance.  And I have already committed all the savings I have.  So the race is to build something cool and get people to discover it, hopefully one person that can fund the next stage will discover it and love it.  With each conversation, meeting, phone call, I get more excited.  It is a leap of faith, but I feel my faith is well founded.  I had already built the prototype, which is now at jables.co.  We started working with two different designers.  One in India and one in Utah.  The one in India charges around $10 an hour and the one in Utah charges about $75 an hour.  We should get the final designs this week.  Then we will have the HTML front end built.  After that we will start building out the back end.  All told, Charles believes we can get it done in under two months.  That seems really fast, but he seems to know what he is talking about and he has clearly worked on similar projects.

Once the application is built we will begin populating it with data for a week or two and testing before we tell people about it.  Once it is clear the application works and does not have any issues, we will start telling people about it.  Then the race is on to find investors for the next phase.  The next phase is to have a full launch in one market: Dallas.  Then if we can prove the model works by generating revenue, we will move into more large metropolitan markets.  By targeting the top 9 metropolitan areas, we can cover 28% of the population.

But one step at a time.  Just need that damn designer to send me those freaking designs.  The anticipation is killing me.

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