Here is an interesting use of Excel. Use it to design User Interface Prototypes.
A UI Prototype is one of the steps we do while developing systems. It contains a clear and detailed user interface mocked up so that we can clearly find-out how end-users would react to such a system.
Now, there are a ton of great tools to build UI prototypes, easiest of them being pencil and paper. But I have been using Excel (ahem!) for creating UI prototypes for the last few years with great success.
In almost all the projects where I worked as a business analyst, I used Excel (or Powerpoint) to create clear, well defined UI mockups to show what the end system would look like. This has helped greatly in understanding various unstated needs of users and speeded up system development.
A Practical Example of UI Prototypes made in Excel
Today I want to show you a practical example of how UI prototypes designed in Excel helped me choose one alternative over other.
While creating Excel School sales page, I needed to clearly show both options and provide a way to select one of them for the prospective students. I had 2 ideas in mind. I wasn’t sure which one would work. My initial thought is to draw both of them on paper and show it to my wife and find-out which one she would prefer. But then, my drawing is as good as my skateboarding. Just plain awful.
Even though I cannot draw a peanut on paper, I can create a whole peach tree in excel. So I turned to it and created 2 exact mockups of what I had in mind.
Then I showed both of them to my wife. She pointed to the one on left.
So I went with that option and designed it in HTML / CSS later that night.
But, this is a lame example. What if I want to make a complex UI in Excel?
Of course my example is lame. But you can make complex UIs in Excel with same ease. Remember form controls? You can use them to quickly create a mock up of almost any system and show it to your users to get instant feedback.
Here is an example:
Download Excel UI Prototype Examples Workbook:
In this workbook, you can find above 3 examples. See them, play with them, poke them to get inspiration for your next UI prototype.
Do you use Excel for Prototyping?
As I said, I have more than once impressed my customers by quickly churning out a mockup using excel. You can easily add drawing shapes, icons, form controls and place them on the grid layout to give perfect alignment and look. I think this is a great use of Excel.
What about you? Do you use excel for UI Prototyping? Share your experiences using comments.
26 Responses to “FIFA Worldcup Excel Spreadsheets [Roundup]”
Nice roundup! Do you know of any one-page spreadsheets which will be updated by an administrator after each game? Would be nice to be able to print out the latest results whenever I feel like checking them as I probably won't be following closely every day.
I actually haven't tried any of the above ones yet, but I thought I'd mention this one that I found which makes a nice one-page form you can fill in dynamically. http://exceltemplate.net/sports/world-cup-2010-schedule-and-scoresheet/
I would like to recommend you these one: http://www.anotagol.com/
You can choose your interface language (english, spanish, italian, portuguese, german or french) and your country for the timezone of match. I like it very much.
An awesome online world cup calendar in flash.
http://www.marca.com/deporte/futbol/mundial/sudafrica-2010/calendario-english.html
Got one more tracker in excel (one page)
http://cid-b09e57e6e960505c.office.live.com/browse.aspx/.Public
[...] Passend zu gerade laufenden Fußball-WM gibt es auf Chandoo.org alles wissenswerte über Excel-Anwendungen für den Fußball-Fan. [...]
Great!!!
I strongly recommend this :
http://www.en.excel-soccer-2010.de/downloads
Chandoo how you found this ...
@Rohit.. really beautiful file. I missed it during my research. Now, I recommend it. 🙂
Hi Chandoo - thanks for the recommandation 🙂 - Regards
[...] Excel, then print it on the other side of your Match Schedule from step 2 above. There are several other Excel spreadsheet templates you can download, but this is probably the only one-page version you can find; plus, it [...]
Does anybody know how to re-create this(?): http://www.marca.com/deporte/futbol/mundial/sudafrica-2010/calendario-english.html
...or do you know where a template can be found? I am DYING to have something like this on my site. When I found it, I had been looking for the longest time for a circular calendar. I found a couple that weren't adequate. Then I stumbled upon this one and my eyes nearly popped out of my head. If anyone can lead me in the right direction, I would be eternally grateful!
Thanks in advance!
Robert
@Robert...
Doing something like that is a lot of work. You can probably get it done with some hired help from a flash developer.
@Robert, the World Cup flash in the Spanish Marca newspaper is impresive, but not much as my own animated spreadsheet with the Goals of 2010 World Cup South Africa in Excel that I just published into my blog:
http://pedrowave.blogspot.com/2010/06/goals-of-2010-world-cup-south-africa-in.html
Download from here:
http://cid-6b219f16da7128e3.office.live.com/view.aspx/.Public/Goals%20South%20Africa%20Animated.xlsx
And start to enter the goals of the rest of matches.
Has anyone seen, or made, a Spreadsheet where you can record the scorers and see a 'top scorers' chart. Would be a nice enhancement
@Neil... checkout this one http://www.inflexionary.com/sports/world-cup-2010-excel
it uses macros to fetch scores from web (and provides very comprehensive analysis too)
@All.. Thanks for the comments. I have updated the post with few more links now.
Hi,
Check this dashboards too:
http://dashboards.org/world-cup-dashboards-and-visualizations/
😉
[...] Here is a collection of FIFA World Cup Spreadsheets if you are more in to that sort of thing. | [...]
[...] Cup fever is here!In FIFA Worldcup Excel Spreadsheets Roundup, Chandoo has some links to useful World Cup tracking workbooks. Only one of them (the first one) [...]
[...] World Cup fever is here!In FIFA Worldcup Excel Spreadsheets Roundup, Chandoo has some links to useful World Cup tracking workbooks. Only one of them (the first one) [...]
Hey, you missed ours! It has everything you need and more, but not a whole pile of silly extras (National Anthems, etc). I'll be making another one for the 2014 world cup. We had over 4000 hits on it!
@Michael Harwood.
Where is it then? You should have posted a link
Sie sollten an einem Wettbewerb teil zu nehmen für einen der besten Blogs im Web. Ich werde empfehlen Sie diese Seite!
Google translation: You should take part in a contest for one of the best blogs on the web. I will recommend this site!
[...] and welcome to the forum, Maybe these similar spreadsheets might give you a few initial ideas: FIFA Worldcup Excel Spreadsheets [Roundup] | Chandoo.org - Learn Microsoft Excel Online If you have specific areas / formulae / layout choices for parts of your spreadsheet that you are [...]
Calling all football fans around the globe! The biggest football festival will kick off on the 12th June 2014 and everyone is placing their bets of who will have the honour of lifting the golden trophy.
Use our free interactive Excel templatel to predict the World cup finalists ! No macros !
http://www.spreadsheet1.com/world-cup-2014-free-excel-prediction-template.html
I also made a Worldcup-tracker, with MS Access, which can also generate reports in Excel
e.g. a match-schedule with locations on y-axis and dates on x-axis, see:
http://worktimesheet2014.blogspot.com.es/2014/05/excel-with-match-schedule-for-2014-fifa.html
and:
http://worktimesheet2014.blogspot.com.es/2014/05/match-access-app-to-track-world-cup.html
where can i find raw data in excel file format of fifa world cups (1930-2014)
@Vivek
Have a read of: http://chandoo.org/forum/threads/goal-of-world-cup.17637/
The location is mentioned in Somendra's comments
Free XLSX Prediction Spreadsheet for World Cup 2018 Russia!
https://www.spreadsheet1.com/fifa-world-cup-2018-russia-free-prediction-templates-for-excel.html