Well, things are hotting up with Sketch. We’ve wireframed a full beta version and gone through it with the whole team. We’ve discussed what should be in and what should be out. And we’ve been brutal. There are two basic criteria for feature inclusion:

• Is the feature strictly necessary to provide the core value of Sketch?
• Without the feature, would Sketch fail to work acceptably?

The second question legitimately catches things that the first doesn’t. For instance, a designer’s ability to access and add to a list of projects that are active in Sketch doesn’t solve their core problem. But without it, Sketch is unusable for more than one active project – not a good thing!

We’ve said ‘no’ to other features. It’s been hard, but the generosity of many web designers, who have allowed us into their businesses and their problems, gives us the knowledge we need to assess the relative value of many ‘nice-to-have’ ideas.

So we are really excited about delivering a tight, clean solution to a basic and widespread web design problem. How to get clients delivering their content before the technical build, so that information architecture, testing, and revision can all take place without cost, and so that completion deadlines for the project can be met?

This entry was posted on Friday, August 1st, 2008 at 4:27 pm and is filed under Sketch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.