[Sigia-l] Wireframe/Prototyping tools (was RE:IntelligentsignsatMicrosof t)

[Jonathan Baker-Bates]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: sigia-l-bounces at asis.org 
> [mailto:sigia-l-bounces at asis.org] On Behalf Of Laurie Gray
> Sent: 22 August 2006 13:39
> To: SIGIA-L
> Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] Wireframe/Prototyping tools (was 
> RE:IntelligentsignsatMicrosof t)
> 
> The only thing I should note - and it's not a problem for me, 
> is that the HTML is "dirty" - our developers are not able to 
> reuse it in any way. 

Now, this is perhaps a far more significant observation than it first
appears. Not because I think an HTML prototype should be re-usable, but
because *my* definition of the ideal IA tool would include the ability
for it to output designs in a format that either contributes to, or in
fact actually is, the input for developers to then start creating the
application with.

Granted, this is the vision that Microsoft has with Interactive Designer
and the whole XAML with Visual Studio thing (and maybe ASP.NET Web
Matrix), but I'll leave that OS monoculture thing to one side for a
second.

The reason I have been following Axure over the past three years is that
it's the only tool that holds out the possibility of exporting UI
designs as data descriptions via XML. The writers of Axure,
unfortunately, don't seem to understand why I'm so excited about this
possibility (I exchanged as few un-productive emails a year or two ago).


Personally I'm not fussy about the schemas we might use, or whether
they're the result of 10 years of philosophical introspection. The
important thing is to ensure that we're thinking about content and data
as part of the foundation of what we do, as user experience experts.

To put it simply, if a developer is looking at a wireframe, or any other
user experience specification, she's wondering how to describe the
content they see on it. Too often we are happy to assume this is
implicit, leaving the data modelling or content type specification jobs
to tech guys - who are frequently not in a position to reflect the
customer or business needs properly.

My angle is always; if you can understand the data you have, then you
can do what you like with it. I don't think this is at odds with
customer driven solution design. Rather, it's an essential part of
enabling such solutions to be realised. 

Without getting into further detail on this - does anyone else here want
to join me in emailing the makers of Axure to see if we can get the
penny to drop? If it does drop, they will be millionaires, and we will
be heroes (and possibly millionaires too, but that's unlikely...).

Jonathan




_____________________________________________________________________
This e-mail has been scanned for viruses by MessageLabs.