[Sigia-l] Life after Visio

[Gothelf, Jeff]

I agree with Anne's praise of Visio. As is often the case, many
organizations try to find alternate (to Visio) means to creating IA
deliverables that work best for their teams. This experience prompted me to
write a comparison article back in January on the virtues
(http://www.boxesandarrows.com/archives/practical_applications_visio_or_html
_for_wireframes.php)  of Visio versus HTML for creating, specifically,
wireframes though my points carry through to other IA deliverables.

With minimal time invested to learn, Visio has proven to me to be a valuable
tool in creating my work.

I would be curious to hear the list's opinions on using Flash MX for IA.
Specifically, I would be interested to hear how it deals with the issues I
discuss in my article -- versioning, portability, accessibility, printing,
tech handoff, exporting, etc.

Also, how much time must be invested in order to become proficient enough
for Flash MX to become an everyday IA production tool?

[Jeff]


-----Original Message-----
From: Anne Hjortshoj [mailto:anne at mindstorm.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2003 7:57 AM
To: Adrian Howard
Cc: Stewart Dean; sigia-l at asis.org
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] Life after Visio


Visio works great if you learn to use background pages and some of the 
(very, very well hidden) palettes. It's unfortunate that the product 
hides some of its best features. But if you take the time to learn about 
Visio, you may find that it's very useful indeed.

That said, I wish that Microsoft would (a) take the time to make Visio 
more usable, so that people wouldn't have to buy one or more books to 
figure out how to effectively use the tool and (b) optimize it for IA use.

Here's a short list of helpful items in Visio:

- Background pages: If you know how to use them, they will make your 
life much, much easier. Forget layers, you won't need them anymore.
- There are two palettes, a navigator palette and a page explorer 
palette, that assist in zooming in/out and navigating among pages. I 
found that these were quite helpful.
-  The stencils under "Visio Extras" are probably among the most useful 
to IAs, after the basic blocks. There are also Web GUI stencils available.

Hope that helps.

-Anne

Adrian Howard wrote:

>
> On Wednesday, August 6, 2003, at 10:44  am, Stewart Dean wrote:
> [snip]
>
>> I think Visio is a truly awful tool that too many IAs have got into 
>> the habit of using. You can work with layers but it's a nightmare to 
>> use without writing a macro. In terms of usability it is awful.
>>
>> But I have to use it because other IAs use it.
>>
>> The alternative?
>
>
> Not an alternative for everybody, but if you have Mac OS X available 
> give OmniGraffle a go. I find it a *lot* more pleasant to use than 
> than Visio.
>
> It hits the sweet spot for me of enough functionality to do useful 
> work without too many useless gewgaws that get in the way. And the 
> pro-version can import and export Visio files if you need to play with 
> other people.
>
> http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnigraffle/ for more info. I've 
> no connection with Omni. Just a happy user.
>
> Adrian
>
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