My first port of call when thinking about an application doesn't involve fancy tools or an IDE. Once the customer requirements are established, I take myself as far away from a computer as possible, wash all thoughts of JavaScript and Ext JS from my head, and remove as many distractions as possible.
With that done, I grab a large notebook and a pencil and get scribbling. I've never found a better way to quickly draft ideas than a bit of manual labor, so while I'm designing in the same way as we've seen in the previous few chapters, I can avoid getting bogged down with drawing tools and UML diagrams.
Tip
All of this needs to be formalized in documented design decisions later. The purpose is to quickly test out ideas and avoid dead ends.
How did I start?
Well, it's not pretty, but you can see the relationship between this and the diagrams of UI views we saw in previous chapters. Note that the intention with these images is not to spell out the design in exacting detail...