[Sigia-l] Re: Where's the reality?

[Trenouth, John]

Leisa Reichelt said:

> I'm toying with the idea of ditching Visio and learning 
> how to output good quality HTML templates that developers 
> might be able to re-use and that clients could physically 
> play with

In my experience it would be a huge mistake to forgo lo-fi prototyping
and just jump right into hi-fi.

For instance, you will find that trying to produce "good quality HTML"
for prototypes that can be re-used for production quality application
will be really slow and really expensive.  It also introduces the task
of debugging your prototypes--something you don't have to do in Visio
(or whatever).  Soon you'll find that you're not making prototypes
anymore, you're actually making the application.

Furthermore, prototypes have very different goals and constraints from
production applications, making code reuse a very risky prospect.  

Hi-fi prototypes also raise unreasonable and premature expectations.
"That looks great, and it works.  Let's ship it!"  "but this is just a
shallow prototype front-end."  "Sure, but it looks great, let's ship
it."  (I've had this conversation a few times).

HTML toward the end of rapid iterative prototyping--sure, but only if
the interactions are so complex that they can only be represented
occurring over time.

Fred Brooks said you should build one to throw it away, because you will
anyway.  While a little hyperbolic, I've found that to be fairly
accurate for code, designs, writing, most things I make professionally
or as a hobby.

Working together.  For life.(sm)
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