[Sigia-l] Elements of Documentation

[Listera]

"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.)

> The working prototype does not invite group interaction and
> collaboration in the same way that a wireframe does.

Perhaps not in the same way, but I've often had the most productive and
enthusiastic input from clients after I show them a prototype. I've written
about this effect before here, but the prototype, unlike anything else,
forces everyone to view the product as something real, something with
consequences, problems, benefits that will soon change their daily work
patterns. That's when everybody starts taking the project seriously. It's
right there. You can click on stuff. It walks and talks like...

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.

Best,

Ziya