[Sigia-l] UI spec document tool

[Pradyot Rai]

> We are reaching the upper limit on effectiveness of MS Word as a
> repository of our software UI spec. Our docs are about 125 pages, mostly
> wireframes of each screen with associated text.
> Word is getting quite piggish:

You must look into the whole process from creating the UI to generating
the UI specs. As mentioned already by Listera, breaking into smaller
chunks and sending the PDFs is good idea. InDesign kind of tool will be
good tool to manage this work most efficiently at your end, however, it
will still bring challenges to "manipulate it".

> The one big, big pro for Word is its portability - that we can guarantee
> our clients can read it, manipulate it, print it, etc.
> The first, most logical jump might to be Visio, but that's a awfully
> light on handling text well.

You are right. It may seems logical, till you are finished dumping 125
pages into Visio. It will start making your life misarable afterwards ;)

> What do other companies use for a spec of this size/complexity?

The place where I work, we do manage all the UI specs, documentations,
requirements, design with Visio and Word. It is not the best way to do,
for the obvious reasons. However I have started thinking this whole domain
is really messed up. No product has surfaced up as "one" tool which can
help UI to be managed end to end.

There is need for a tool which can do the following --
- links with the UI requirements
- Helps with the wireframes
- integrates the prototpes (and helps create one)
- Allows to create UI demos (as simulator) (as partial interactions or
connected with set of data)
- allows collaborations and version controls
- Generate UI spec.s "automatically" for engineering needs

There is one product though - "iRise" which is capable of doing all the
above. I have checked the demo and I am personally impressed. But having
all the above said "features" is one thing and creating the market
acceptable product is another. But my believe is this market will soon be
flooded with many such products, because IMHO, UI is the next frontier for
most of the technology companies.

Prady