[Sigia-l] Diagramming tools?

[Ziya Oz]

Stew Dean:

> First up you run into the danger of...

[a lot of strawman arguments snipped]

> ...Awful IA work.

You *can* take a pencil and stab yourself into interminable pain, too. You
can keep drawing diagrams till the cows come home and never leave Kansas.
Yes, there are countless ways to screw up if you are so inclined.

> There are very good reasons to diagram first before rushing to code.

Or you can start by understanding that the prototype is not a proof of code
but a proof of concept.

Early on, the prototype might illuminate how, say, a change in one widget
might affect content or form in another widget to a certain set of
stakeholders. At another milestone in its lifecycle, the same prototype
might demonstrate to developers how that widget-to-widget interaction is
simply an array manipulation. In the first instance, all you want is the
smile on the faces of non-technical people when they witness the smooth
interaction between two widgets that, say, hides a whole bunch of previous
complexity. In the second instance, all you care is that developers realize
beyond all that UI wizardry all they have to do is to map two arrays from
two different XML files. And so on.

This is not about code, it's about revelation of design intent
contextualized for different audiences at different times. It's a matter of
appropriate communication. It's to move the idea along the path to
completion. Nothing achieves that as well as a prototype. Nothing.

> Now if there was a way diagrams could be transformed into prototypes
> that's great.  

There are many tools that operate in that domain, some even from Microsoft.
MSFT even sells a tool that can interactively move from a logic flow diagram
to rules/code, back and forth. Depends on what you want.

> I used to use Flash for this and I still recommend it.
> Other tools are available but appear to be very 'drag a widget'
> orientated, not sure they will allow me to prototype up some of the
> new interface elements I use.

Flash isn't the appropriate tool for that. Flex is. You can do a lot of UI
prototyping in Flex with components that actually function with no or
minimal scripting.
 
> I'm sure someone will come up with a way to appease both of us but so
> far I havnt see you suggest a solution.

I'm not into imposing 'obvious industry standards.'

> How do you prototype your sites?

I'm a designer, therefore context is everything to me. I use whatever tool
is needed for a given context from HTML to Flex to Basic to PowerPoint to
Visio. They are just tools.

> Can you see a time when a diagram is better than a prototype?

Yes, when you can't create a prototype.

----
Ziya

Complexity is simple.