[Sigia-l] Web browser based diagramming

[Listera]

Stewart Dean:

> The Expression tool set is not an IA toolset - it's a web design toolset.

Microsoft is not interested in web (site) design. They never have been. They
sat on IE for half a decade, for which Gates apologized this week. They are
interested in *application* design, as their roots and commercial interests
are in the desktop application space.
 
> There are back end developement tools,

The Expression suite is NOT explicitly targeting backend developers.

> front end developement tools

They are explicitly targeting designers.

> but no experience structure tools.

What's that?

The value proposition of Expression is that *unifies* the design and
development process on a common XAML platform, which travels between
designers and developers without change, reinterpretation or transformation.
With Expression you create actual OS widgets that are fully functional
without writing code. They are not placeholders or simulations. As a
designer you get to give them behaviors and interaction.

> An experience structure could be created to work with diffrent back end
> systems and with different user interfaces so,  in my view, my vision of an IA
> tool is independent to both at it's core.

Which is in some contrast to Expression in the sense that Expression doesn't
single out one phase of app creation and isolate it from others as a
disjointed deliverable. It embraces the unity and integrated nature of
design from concept through functional prototype, which, in Expression,
happens to be functional executable code as well.

> I covered the Microsoft tools elsewhere, they're all miles away from the IA
> problem in my view and miss what I see as the core of user expience, the
> strucutre and flow.

"core of user expience, the strucutre and flow" is not something that needs
to be abstracted out of the design process, in the Expression paradigm. You
don't need to abstract it as a disjointed deliverable, precisely because you
imbue that within the iterated, ongoing prototype. The application speaks
for itself.

I point these out not to underline whether you misunderstood Expression or
not, but to fundamentally question the notion of a "true IA tool," whatever
that may be.

----
Ziya

"If you can't feed a team with two pizzas, the size of the team is too
large."