I work at a consulting company that uses an inhouse tool that is a beast of burden. Recognise that some of this might be already solved in the listed solutions (excel included) but this is what you don't want:
7.5 hours - every working day you need to put in 7.5 hours regardless of what you do. Put in 7.4hours and it cracks it at you. What would be nice: Know that I have entered time against a code and assign the rest of the days time to a generic code that I can edit at a later date or leave.
Manual submission - every day the user needs to be submit their timesheet. People forget. People don't care. Management cares. What would be nice: If time has been entered, auto submit. Otherwise, let me be or prompt me in a nice way
Making changes - if you want to edit hours or change a job code on time that has been submitted, it requires all days back to that day to be unsubmitted, the edit made, then all time re-submitted. What would be nice: let me edit by code by day
Doesn't know where I am - we generally spend most of our time at the clients offices and we have their address(es) within the tool. What would be nice: Know that I have spent time at a client office and put in time to that clients code and prompt me to confirm it
Code search - painful. We have hundreds of client codes, past and present, and finding them is not as simple as type in client name and select. Generally there is a client codes, a project code and potentially a sub code. If someone has spelt something differently, allocated it to a different person or if you enter one character incorrectly, it can't find it. What would be nice: Search that works
Not mobile - they have put together a "mobile friendly" version but it provides limited functionality resulting in having to get onto the desktop version to do most of it and then use the mobile site. What would be nice: Mobile that doesn't require desktop intervention
Reporting - just plain ugly and hard. What would be nice: Not plain ugly and hard reporting
Visibility - if it is a fixed fee project and I have 40 hours allocated to it, I don't know that unless I'm told / project manager is riding my arse on hours. What would be nice: As time is submitted, show me how much I've consumed / how much is left
Seperation - it isn't connected to the resourcing tool that lists what people are on, how long they are on it or if they have holidays booked in. What would be nice: If person is put onto client, put that code in their time sheet. If holidays booked, put it in timehsheet
Using good old pen and paper or adobe ideas are a good starting point. Don't worry if your sketches look like crayon scribbles by a 3 year old, the act of putting your thoughts down will likely lead to more thoughts/tweaks to the original idea. And the more you do this, the better your design skills will get.
After that, and acknowledge that you had said not to actually build it, I'd move to putting together a basic prototype with any parts that you can get your hands on - trade/building supplies/art and craft store/daiso/discount store etc.
The benefit of doing this is that once you/potential customers can handle the product, you'll learn more than any visual mockup will provide and the design will likely change again. Going through this cycle several times will lead to a much better design.
Melbourne. Combination of bike and public transport (good overall but there are some deadzones.). Also fair few temporary hire car are around the city and surrounding suburbs
It can work but both finders and graders would definitely need to get some reasonable education beforehand. Something like a code academy/treehouse of IP would be the go. Also, the amount of time it would take/amount each gamer would need to or be willing to commit to get decent results would be interesting.
Back at uni in an "business model/startup" course, we had to complete an assignment essentially doing what your suggesting. We had had 6-8hrs of prior classes and a fair bit of course reading (at least 4hrs if you did all). We all got a brief for the technology we had to investigate which was an device for completing eye surgery surgery! Everyone found at least 10+ patents that could have been seen as prior art as there was competitors in that space (some of which was found by others, some of which was totally misunderstood and crap) - In the end, no one found anything new that would have impacted the new tech and our lecturer (a VC) was very happy with the additional free research! He went on to use those who got the best grades for some paid work - a good way to outsource any initial research his firm had to do on potential investments
7.5 hours - every working day you need to put in 7.5 hours regardless of what you do. Put in 7.4hours and it cracks it at you. What would be nice: Know that I have entered time against a code and assign the rest of the days time to a generic code that I can edit at a later date or leave. Manual submission - every day the user needs to be submit their timesheet. People forget. People don't care. Management cares. What would be nice: If time has been entered, auto submit. Otherwise, let me be or prompt me in a nice way Making changes - if you want to edit hours or change a job code on time that has been submitted, it requires all days back to that day to be unsubmitted, the edit made, then all time re-submitted. What would be nice: let me edit by code by day Doesn't know where I am - we generally spend most of our time at the clients offices and we have their address(es) within the tool. What would be nice: Know that I have spent time at a client office and put in time to that clients code and prompt me to confirm it Code search - painful. We have hundreds of client codes, past and present, and finding them is not as simple as type in client name and select. Generally there is a client codes, a project code and potentially a sub code. If someone has spelt something differently, allocated it to a different person or if you enter one character incorrectly, it can't find it. What would be nice: Search that works Not mobile - they have put together a "mobile friendly" version but it provides limited functionality resulting in having to get onto the desktop version to do most of it and then use the mobile site. What would be nice: Mobile that doesn't require desktop intervention Reporting - just plain ugly and hard. What would be nice: Not plain ugly and hard reporting Visibility - if it is a fixed fee project and I have 40 hours allocated to it, I don't know that unless I'm told / project manager is riding my arse on hours. What would be nice: As time is submitted, show me how much I've consumed / how much is left Seperation - it isn't connected to the resourcing tool that lists what people are on, how long they are on it or if they have holidays booked in. What would be nice: If person is put onto client, put that code in their time sheet. If holidays booked, put it in timehsheet