Perhaps due to the lack of creative adventures at work the past few weeks, I decided to write a working web app in 5 days (mornings + evenings only, no cheating during working hours).
I've been fascinated lately with collaborative authoring and the impact that we may see from Google Wave, due to both it's collaborative nature and the introduction of temporality to conversations. Watching a discussion morph over time by replaying it like a movie is fascinating at both social and technological levels.
So, for you Agile nerds, here was my user story:
"As a musician, I want a way to easily write, share, edit and print a set list so that I don't freak out at the last minute before a show and go hunting for a paper pad and half-working pen from a bartender."
The "done criteria" are:
- No authentication, login, or process that gets in the way of the product
- Many band members can edit the set list at one time without locking or error messages
- As keyboard-driven as possible
- Ability to "replay" the set list's authoring process to see decisions made over time
- An effective stylesheet for print media
It surprised me in a way, because the end product may not apply only to music set lists but any simple collaborative writing in general. For example: this morning, Jenny used it to write me a note illustrating her intense desire for me to put down the coffee and go on a bike ride with her. Watching the replay of the note showed me a glimpse of her thought process.
Technical Details
The app is built with Rails, MySQL, and a decent batch of JavaScript. The realtime updates are done through Juggernaut, a push server for Ruby & Rails.
I've tested it in Firefox 3+ and the latest Safari. Because this is a personal experiment, I have no interest at the moment in making it work in IE6 or IE7.
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