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Resources/Tools for Side Project Planning and Mocks

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Mid-Level Software Engineer at Taro Community17 days ago

Hi!

I am working on some side projects and I find it a bit challenging to plan and organize the work in a manageable way. Are there any resources or websites out there which could be used for this without paying a ton of money? I mainly need a place where I can make some initial UI mock designs first and then probably do some basic planning for the tasks. I am not experienced with professional UX/UI stuff and so would benefit from something simple for beginner to make the mocks. Any advice or resources shared is appreciated!

Thanks!

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Discussion

(4 comments)
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    Tech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
    17 days ago

    For mocks, I actually have a really awesome fresh tool for you: https://readdy.ai/

    In short, Readdy is an AI designer. It's obviously rough around the edges, but if you prompt it well enough, it can crank out some really nice fairly high-fidelity stuff. This tool is effectively Taro's product designer now, and it's so fun and useful. The free tier goes quite a long way.

    For project management, you don't need to be too fancy. A Notion or a Google doc with milestones is enough. If you really want to go all out, you could use Asana or something, but that feels like overkill.

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    AI/ML Eng @ Series C startup
    17 days ago

    For mocks, you can use Figma if you need super high fidelity mocks, but that AI tool Alex mentioned should be enough.

    For design docs, I found that either Notion or Google Docs in pageless format works really well.

    This gem should be a super-course:
    https://www.jointaro.com/course/frontend-system-design-masterclass-building-playlists/

    In the Defining Requirements section, there's a link to a design doc for a 1-week long feature build from Alex.

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    Tech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
    17 days ago

    I have just started exploring this, but if you want to be fancy with AI, check out Claude Projects.

    The idea is that it will take your brain dump and help you organize it:

    "Projects allow you to ground Claude’s outputs in your internal knowledge—be it style guides, codebases, interview transcripts, or past work."

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    Mid-Level Software Engineer
    Taro Community
    13 days ago

    Thanks @Alex Chiou, @Elliot Kang and @Rahul Pandey
    These resources are spot on! Readdy is perfect for quick mocks, and that design doc template from Elliot's link is just what I needed. Really appreciate it—thanks so much for the prompt replies!

    I want to explore the Claude Projects @Rahul. Thanks for pointing it out! Apart from planning/organizing coding projects, if you want to use ai for "vibe" coding this is better than the Chat GPT Pro?