[Sigia-l] Elements of Documentation

[Donna Marie Fritzsche]

At 10:14 PM -0400 6/30/02, Listera wrote:
>"Donna Marie Fritzsche" wrote:
>
>>  Additionally, the process of creating the artifacts facilitates the IA's
>>  processing of information and leads to refinements that might not take place
>>  if one went straight from a set of ideas to code.
>
>In my book, 'prototype' is the last stage of structure/interface work and
>*not* the first stage of production code. I don't necessarily expect a
>single line of code to be adopted from the prototype. It's the distillation
>of concepts, structure, architecture, interface, workflow, not a shell for
>the production code. (There are ways of prototyping in this sense, with no
>or next to no code at all.)


I was using "code" to mean prototype as you are using it here. - I 
didn't mean it in the sense of production code!

>
>So I find that more lights go off after the presentation of the prototype
>than anything else. Personally, I want to get there as soon as I can.
>
>Now the critical issue here is that the prototype should be flexible enough
>to be changed easily, given all this input. It's the beginning of an
>iterative process, not the last, frozen, rigid deliverable. It simply
>subsumes many of the initial half measures.
>
>This is not a recipe for all projects. It works best with more vertical than
>horizontal ones; more appropriate for online apps than general purpose web
>sites.

You are the third person that Ive spoken to who has stated the 
"lights going off phenomenon".
Maybe you hit the nail on the head with your statement about online 
apps/vertical sites.
Especially with online apps, the needs and nature of collaboration 
(and sign off) are different - I can see it working very effectively. 
As long as you keep it iterative - it essentially becomes rapid 
prototyping in this sense.  How do you address the issue of getting 
feedback - the iterative nature of the process - are people as 
willing to give you feedback and suggest changes?  I imagine that 
with an online app, your users are more invested in the process and 
are more willing and able to take an active role.

Thanks,

Donna


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