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

[Stewart Dean]

Hi Nasir

As you say.. "nothing that would directly convert, say, a site map into a 
prototype". As an IA that's the minimum i'm really after, and idealy that 
prototype is just a early version of a final site.

Having watched the expression demo I can say that there is a lot about 
visual deisgn, layout and constant referal to 'rich user experience' with 
not tool to structure that rich user expereince.

They are hitting the far edges of what an IA tool should be just as adobe 
is. It's a page coding tool, the visual design tool and a multimedia tool. 
So that's dreamweaver, photoshop/illustrator/fireworks and flash/flex 
equivalents.

If microsoft deliver Vista on the back of user experience but focus on solid 
code and visual effects but miss out the whole structure stuff - like a more 
usable interface - then this will be major disaster. It's like someone told 
them about user experience and they like the term but didnt understand it. 
I'm hoping it's just their marketing department being clueless.

Sorry to rant but with all this money to spend they must hit the target at 
least once, even if by accident.

Stewart Dean




>From: "Nasir Barday" <nbarday at gmail.com>
>To: "Stewart Dean" <stew8dean at hotmail.com>
>CC: mcdowell.scott at gmail.com, sigia-l at asis.org
>Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] Why does not real IA tool exist? was Re: Where's the 
>reality?
>Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2006 14:23:46 -0500
>
>I'm using Microsoft's Expression Interactive Designer (
>www.microsoft.com/expression) to create data-driven prototypes from 
>scratch.
>It has support for annotations, though nothing that would directly convert,
>say, a site map into a prototype. One possibility here could be a tool to
>generate XAML, a declarative language for interfaces and
>data-binding (perhaps an "embrace-and-extend" version of OpenLaszlo's
>language?). Expression uses XAML natively, so you can tweak it on the
>artboard, a la Visio.
>
>My fantasy (yet to be realized as I progress on this project) is to style
>the prototype with a degraded paper-ish skin to keep the design conceptual.
>As the design matures, I can work with a visual designer using Expression
>Graphic Designer to develop progressively detailed and "pretty" skins. I
>hear Macromedia's Flex works in a similar fashion, but I haven't installed
>it yet.
>
>I'm psyched to see people's work in this area at the IA Summit!
>
>- Nasir