It's interesting that you build your models first. This has been the way I've worked, but has felt clumsy so far on this project - hence my asking of this question. I do like the idea of controlling the models entirely from the console before building any UI though; that's definitely interesting to me as I can continue to develop the models to fit use cases that I find (I will be able to speak with a potential customer in the coming week so I'm hoping to glean more insight then) and nothing at all is wasted.

I am also not that visual, I do find it easier to fit the jigsaw together mentally, but I like to get this down somewhere solid where it can be reviewed/altered. Also, my memory isn't so great and in the past I have forgotten realisations that I'd made regarding faults in my design or changes that I should make.

Thanks for your insight; I'm edging towards the idea of modelling directly in Rails migrations.