[Sigia-l] The fuzzy line btwn IA and Design

[George Olsen]

At 10:44 AM -0400 4/29/02, PeterV wrote:
>Have other people had this problem of clients confusing wireframes 
>(that are kept "un-visual-design-like") with visual design and 
>questioning the relationship between both? Was it when you were 
>presenting both?

Graphic designers have had this problem for years, albeit in different ways.

Aside from education, one trick is to actually *sketch* the 
wireframes by hand. There's something about a hand-sketched look vs. 
the crispness of computer-drawn lines seems to help most people it's 
only a rough draft.

Of course, the time involved in hand-sketching isn't as practical -- 
although one shortcut I've found is to do all your work on computer 
then print out and trace over the wireframe on a new sheet of paper. 
(If you want to be efficient, you print out the wireframe text in a 
"handwritten" typeface, like Tekton, and trace the lines onto that.)

The down sides are that

* It's hand to use shading. (You can do cross-hatching, but it takes 
some practice to vary weights and it takes time.)

* It's paper-based deliverable. (Yeah, you can scan it, but then it 
creates a huge file. This incidently is the same problem with "hand 
retouching" it in Photoshop.)

So still looking for a way to use a "mainstream" vector program that 
can be roughened up to at least give the feel of hand-drawn. (Yes I 
know about Denim, but don't have time to mess around with it.)

-- 
______________________________________________________
George Olsen                           george at interactionbydesign.com
User Experience Architect                                     310-993-0467
                      http://www.interactionbydesign.com