>> done with a large surface I swear by my 8' by 4' whiteboard in my living room. :-)
-----Original Message----- From: Jim Davis [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 12:03 AM To: CF-Talk Subject: RE: Architecting Tools > I'm doing some research on what kinds of design tools ColdFusion > developers find useful when initially speccing out a project. By > design, I don't necessarily mean graphic design so much as > application > architecture, however eventually graphic design has to be taken into > account, as well. For instance, do you use Visio to mock up the > interface, or HTML, or just a light-weight version of the app in CF? > Do you use Photoshop? Freehand? Graph paper (my favorite > technique)? > How about database design, workflow, and process diagrams? Any > information would be greatly appreciated. First level of inteface design and flow is done with a large surface and a butt-load of post-it notes. Gotta love post it notes! Gotta love large surfaces! The great thing about Post-its is that they can represent anything, but they look like nothing. So you can create a post-it representing each button on a form or process and have a user "run" the application (with you shoving new post-its under their noses when they "click"). They can go through the whole app and you never here "I'd rather see that color or that logo" or anything like that - the Post-its let you focus exclusively on flow and information design without bringing computer design into the convesation. I also do a lot of role-play and competator comparison during the discovery phase. There's a nice product from http://www.imarkup.com/ that lets you annotate web pages (with drawing, notes, voice recordings, file attachments, etc) that can really make the competator review stage a lot easy (you work with your client and capture what they say, then review it later). Put post-its on a white board, one for each "page" (content/tool/access point/etc) of the site and connect the dots to flesh out your navigational needs. Once its done transfer it to a digital medium. I also like to have a high-quality digital camera around to take snapshots of the board through out the process. I'm a Corel Brat from version two so I'm now using version 11 to do most of my mocks and graphic design (IMHO CorelDraw/PhotoPaint are much better suited the web work than PhotoShop/Illustrator - although the latter are much more suited to print work than Corel). With the Corel Suite alone I can do Flash work (from CorelDraw directly or via the new CorelRAVE), PDF creation (a standard feature not requiring Distiller), image maps, cuts, optimizations, etc - it's a very web-focused package. Aside from that Visio and Word make a big showing... I use a bastadized version of the Summit-D methodology and lately I've been mixing that with a more bastardized version of UML - so Visio and Word are needed (lots of documentation... Always documentation!) I like what I see of UML so far... But it's very difficult to apply any "complete" methodology to the kind of very small projects I freelance on. The office is using a REALLY bastardized version of UML although they think that they're using it properly (at least you'll hear the management say "actor" and "use case" a lot - even if they don't have a clue as to what the words mean). Jim Davis ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?forumid=4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?method=subscribe&forumid=4 FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq Get the mailserver that powers this list at http://www.coolfusion.com
