[Sigia-l] The IA in RIAs

[Dave]

Peter, great points and questions all around.

First off, I have a near dead list called webgui that I run. You can
subscribe at http://webgui.htmhell.com/. The list focuses on RIAs when
there is a conversation. ;)

I mention this, b/c I think the UX implications for RIAs would be a
great thread on that list.

To the points:
1. What's in a name? RIA or NDAI (Network Distributed Rich Application
Interface) as I like to more genericly and actually more discriptively
label them as. can't seem to find another word for Rich though and I
think the tern "internet" is being overused when we mean IP based
network internal or external. I like to limit Internet to mean
external WANs.

Anyway, onward and upward b/c the name thing doesn't really matter to
me so long as when I say RIA people know what I mean and the only
heavy confusion is whether or not it means Flash-only. I would say, it
definitely does not. Flash is the most prominent solution and the most
accessible b/c of its ubiquity, but CURL and XUL are definitely
respectable examples of this type of interface. I think Norpath's
solution is another.

2. UX for RIAs
hmm? I don't know really what you mean here. I can use UX methods for
anything from Industrial Design to fashion Design and digital products
in between, so I don't see why UX would fall by the way-side just b/c
of RIAs. The "nothing new" aspect of the conversation really falls
into place when you just think that HTML and the Internet really
aren't all that new either from a design perspective. New canvas
materials but the questions are still the same. We've just gotten
catalyzed to ask new questions, but those new questions are as
appropriate on MS Word as they are on my magazine's web site. It is
all software when ya think about it.

3. IA for RIAs
This is one I was trying to answer as part of this thread. To me most
IAs forget that they are just one piece of the UX puzzle and that
behavior and interaction are part of the toolset that effects even
their domain of ownership -- information findability. RIAs give IAs
who have been so focused on Web-technologies the ability to design
multi-modal displays and complex behaviors around information that
they have been forced to dismiss (rightly or wrongly) till now. Things
like slider bars for instance while doable in DHTML never behave as
well as they do in other types of application building blocks like
CURL or Flash.

4. preset widgets
Flash, CURL, and XUL all have suggested widgets that come w/ their
development environments. Might want to take a look. Most Central apps
for example use the standard Macromedia widgets. Most of these are
customizeable beyond what you see in these apps.

Hope that helps

-- dave