Programming how to show your employees your idea

Question

Before you start working on a software project how do you show your employees your prototype. Most people either draw it on paper or write it on a whiteboard. How would you show it to your employees who live far away? Do they just take a picture of it or fax the paper to them? or do people just use a website not to draw there prototypes and email it to them. Any ideas? Because I really want to draw my ideas on a whiteboard but I am not sure how I would show my employees.

Answer 1

Paper Prototying works well.

Draw a complete interface, including buttons, menus, and other interface elements on a bunch of sheets of paper -- one piece for every window, dialog, or behavior. Don't use a ruler. Hold the pieces of paper in front of a potential user. Have them attempt to perform tasks relevant to your system without how-to assistance.

UPDATE: The question that lists paper protyping tools (that @EBGReen pointed out) is here: Prototyping a GUI with a customer

Answer 2

Joel "Joel on Software" Spolsky has an excellent article on how and why to write a brief functional specification before starting any programming project. He includes an example and later shows the actual spec for a product they new successfully sell.

Answer 3

When I was contracted as a Jr. .NET Developer I was a remote dev. We used Gotomeeting to do SCRUM everyday. They gave me the requirements, the drawings and pictures of what the UI's needed to look like, and I gave them estimates and code. Gotomeeting is amazing software.

We also used Visio drawings and the like for laying out complex database diagrams and relationships, among other things.

It worked really well for us

Answer 4

To be honest I don't generally do much more than a brief draft on paper. Mostly the specific implementation and layout is left to me, so I make it up as I go and then show the work in progress, soliciting potential changes.