[Sigia-l] Diagramming tools?

[Todd Zaki Warfel]

On Apr 4, 2007, at 5:13 AM, Stew Dean wrote:

> It's not Dave he was insulting. ZZZZ used a 'yeah but what do you  
> know' tone with me that really did piss me off.  He then went on to  
> build up a load of straw men and misrepresent what I said based  
> upon his own prejudices.

(So, from now on, any post I make that makes reference to Z... I'm  
going to replace with ZZZZ since he likes to see his name so much and  
hear himself talk (or see himself write)).

> I have written to him off list but he prefers to respond publically.

Yeah, ZZZZ thinks that staying anonymous helps the industry and  
increases credibility. I've had that debate off-list a number of  
times. Sounds a bit delusional to me, but what do I know with a Cog  
Psych background anyway. He prefers the public forum to see his name  
and watch his own ranting.

> Sorry ZZZZ but Visio is definitely the current industry standard  
> tool for IAs, at least in the UK. Is that ideal? Far from it.  Is  
> it my personally preference? Only after being forced into it over  
> the years. Use a bad tool often enough and you can do the job  
> quicker then if you occasionally use a better tool.
>
> I'm open to better tools but so far each one I've used has had  
> barriers to creating what i'm looking to create, even if they help  
> in ways Visio on it's own can't.

Visio sucks. It was never meant for wireframing in the first place -  
look at the page navigation model - tabs. Are you kidding me?  
OmniGraffle can do 95% of what Visio can do, which is 99.999% of what  
you need. And you can live without that other .001%. Illustrator is a  
great alternative http://toddwarfel.com/archives/wireframing-part-ii- 
illustrator-basics/ and the combination of InDesign and Illustrator  
is even better. Now, the new version of Fireworks looks really  
interesting with the introduction of Pages, Master Page, Prototyping  
tools, and the ability to scale vectors and raster images in a new  
way. It's something I'm definitely checking out.


Cheers!

Todd Zaki Warfel
Partner, Design & Usability Specialist
Messagefirst | Designing Information. Beautifully.
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