[Sigia-l] Site maps for web apps, vs for content sites?

[jacco at nieuwland.net]

Hi,

In my previous job I was responsible for creating and maintaining screenflows
and wireframes for web applications. I think the largest application I 
designed
contained a little over 400 pages. These are all individual, unique pages and
all had their own wireframe. I thought that was pretty big.

The way we handled large projects like that is using both sitemaps and
screenflows. For the landing pages we used sitemaps, showing which forms were
available from which pages. Once you zoom in on a form, it becomes more of a
screenflow, going from left to right (generally speaking). Of course, 
sometimes
the number of pages just becomes to big to show from left to right, and flows
start to snake over the page. We could have chosen to create new screenflow
pages for these, but we've tried to minimize the number of screenflow pages
(the screenflow document had over 80 pages as it was).

Of course, this becomes very hard to read for the client, which is why we
integrated the screenflows and wireframes into one HTML deliverable. This
allows the client to browse through the sitemap/screenflow, zoom into more
detailed flows and see wireframes and how they relate to eachother.

Before anyone starts saying you should never create 400 wireframes... 
These also
served as the main requirements documentation for the developers. So 
all fields
of the forms were defined on the wireframes. Also, all (introductory and
explanatory) text on the wireframes was to be the final text in the
application, and therefor the wireframes also served as documentation for the
testers. SO, although after two or three forms you definitely see patterns
emerging, all screens had to be wireframed for documentation purposes.

For us, 400 pages in this light was pretty big. Especially if you're dealing
with a client that has multiple project teams for specific functionality, none
of which were able to baseline that functionality at an early stage...

Jacco Nieuwland


Quoting Todd Warfel <lists at toddwarfel.com>:

> Yes, but you're not mapping all 40,000 pages.
>
> On Feb 11, 2006, at 7:18 AM, Donna Maurer wrote:
>
>
> To me, less than 1000 pages is small (less than 200 is teeny) and it doesn't
> get large
> until about 10,000, massive isn't until at least 40,000 (and then they have
> to be messy,
> heterogeneous)
>
> No wonder I think differently ;) No wonder I can never figure out how you
> all represent
> a site with a diagramatic site map.
>
> Donna
>
>
> Cheers!
>
> Todd R. Warfel
> Partner, Design & Usability Specialist
> Messagefirst | designing and usability consulting
> --------------------------------------
> Contact Info
> Voice: (607) 339-9640
> Email: todd at messagefirst.com
> AIM: twarfel at mac.com
> Blog: http://toddwarfel.com
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