[Sigia-l] Diagramming tools?

[Stew Dean]

On 4/4/07, Ziya Oz <listera at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Stew Dean:
>
> > Visio is definitely the current industry standard tool
> > for IAs, at least in the UK.
>
> All the by-now familiar personalizing posturing aside, this pretty much sums
> it up: YOUR UTTERLY ANECTODAL impression in ONE country 'definitely' makes a
> product an 'obvious industry standard.'

I appear to have struck a nerve.  I don't appreciate you dismissing my
and others experience as 'anactodal'  - or even anecdotal (cheap shot
- I'm mildly dyslexic but do see word displacement like this).  If I
was working for one company and part of a small team you might have a
point. As it stands I freelance with the biggest UK (and
international) companies agencies.  Visio is definilty the product
used the most for creating wireframes and sitemaps by online agencies
world wide.

Again I want to stress I don't think it's the best solution, I
resisted it for a while but any job advert for an IA in the UK will
mention visio or, posibly, omnigraffle or illustrator if they mention
tools being used. Don't take my word for it, go and test this theory,
I havnt looked.

It is the industry standard.  I'll say it again as you don't like me
saying that.  It is the industry standard.

> (If people wonder how those crazy requirements in job descriptions regarding
> 'industry standard' tools, languages, methodologies, etc., come about, this
> is how: rinse, repeat and start believing in it.)

You must have missed the ongoing discussion about viable alternatives
or people rubbishing Visio on a regular basis.  Visio is the program
that is most used by IAs, I can say that as certainly as I can most
wirefames have the notes on the right hand side or most IAs use dot
notation to label pages starting with 0.0 for the home page (some
prefer 1.0).  There is a defacto standard out there that's grown up by
hundreds of IAs interating and I often get to see the work others and
happily take the best ideas  (for example wide and shallow boxes on
site maps offer an advantage over the usual rectangle with centred
text).

I personally am interested to see what the new version of Fireworks
holds. Any Macromedia folks want to share a beta? Worth a go.


-- 
Stewart Dean