[Sigia-l] Why does not real IA tool exist? was Re: Where's the reality?

[Stewart Dean]

Hi Jacco,

Unfortunatly I won't be at the IA summit, I can't justify the expense 
currently (I'm a London based contractor).

To be honest the ability of creating a HTML deliverable from Visio isnt what 
I'm looking for personaly. In the past I have created sitemaps / wireframes 
using Flash and created navigatable and zoomable deliverables which, by the 
sound of it, will do all and more that you tool can. And that's without 
using much programing.  Out of all potential IA tools I view Flash as haivng 
the most potential to create a 'roll your own' IA tool.

I used to use Visio but have recently been mostly Mac based so have switched 
to Omnigraffle - which, when used in anger, is very similair to visio and is 
limited in much the same way. I've also used Freehand, Illustrator, 
Powerpoint, Dreamweaver and Excel and Indesign to create IA deliverables. 
I'm looking for something beyond this.

In essence i'm looking for a way to creating hriachical strucutres, 
application flows and possibly other form of strutures of web site in 
diagram form that then get translated into web based prototypes that can 
seamlessly be used to develope the final version of the application.  This 
is somewhat ambitious a aim I know but I consider possible.   In short by 
drawing site maps and wireframes and providing all the correct rules, error 
trapping etc you can produce a grey version of the final site.

I've got rough specs for such a system which, once more rounded, may be 
worhwhile positing online to get critique.

Cheers

Stewart Dean





>From: Jacco Nieuwland <jacco at nieuwland.net>
>To: Stewart Dean <stew8dean at hotmail.com>, sigia-l at asis.org
>Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] Why does not real IA tool exist? was Re: Where's the 
>reality?
>Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 14:21:51 +0100
>
>
>Not sure if you're going to be at the IA Summit this month, but if you are, 
>make sure you visit the poster session. I'll be presenting a poster (and 
>hopefully a demonstration too) of a toolset for Visio. For Visio I've 
>created a set of templates and macros that allow the export of both 
>screenflows and wireframes into one integrated HTML deliverable. This 
>allows the client/developer/QA person to navigate through the 
>screenflow/sitemap, and see the wireframes here too. It also supports a 
>sort of  rough protoyping functionality, by means of hyperlinks within the 
>wireframes.
>
>I'll be looking for interested people during the conference that want to 
>give the tool (which is currently lacking documentation or support) a 
>testrun. I'll try to get a limited set of beta-testers to have a look at 
>it, then improve it, make sure documentation is ready and hopefully in a 
>couple of months start to offer the tool for download.
>
>Hope to talk to you and other interested people in Vancouver,
>
>Jacco
>
>>
>>No you've hit upon my biggest problem with IA at the moment - there 
>>currently exists no real IA tool. Unless, of course, others know 
>>differently.
>>
>>Stew Dean
>>
>>
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>>IA 06 Summit.  Mark your calendar.  March 23-27, Vancouver, BC.  
>>http://www.iasummit.org/
>>
>>
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