On 1/30/08, Narciso Jaramillo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Just a quick note on this... Our current public Thermo demo does > emphasize the graphic-design-to-production workflow, but we're also > interested in the early-stage interaction design workflow. We do plan to > have basic drawing tools and built-in components to let you do > wireframing, and you can build custom components and try out > interactions and transitions in wireframe as well.
!!!!! It sounds like the overall message of this thread is that the > interaction design workflow is much more about early-stage > experimentation, screen architecture, and prototyping, and that while > visuals are somewhat important (for sketching and presentation > purposes), exact visual bits aren't. Is that a fair characterization? That's exactly it. The tools we work with for wireframing and lo-fi interactive prototyping are very simple. Text boxes, basic shapes, GUI controls (list boxes, radio buttons, etc.). If you give us a snapable grid (or guides) to lay these objects out on, it would keep many of us happy for a good long while. : ) Based on what you describe above, that is exactly what you *have* given us. (Thank you!) I have some more comments about this below... When it comes to interactions, our needs are less simple. Existing prototyping tools (outside of Flash, but it's primary purpose is *not* prototyping) limit the interactions we can represent. While we can fudge a lot of interactions, giving us a broader palette here would be good. The interactions shown in the Thermo videos and the way they are applied to objects is what makes me, personally, the most excited about it. I'd definitely be curious to hear what other kinds of interaction design > needs aren't being addressed by visual-production-oriented design tools > today. The need to produce or at least facilitate the production of printed documentation based on text annotations to the wireframes. You guys make Acrobat, so this shouldn't be a big challenge. : ) Back to the wireframing issue... You say that the current demos focus on the visual design to development workflow... I think it's crucial that the UXD to visual design workflow is well thought out. It should be easy for the VDs (sorry, really I am) to swap out wireframe elements with design elements, but they shouldn't be locked into the wireframe layout. While these layouts are always well and rationally thought out, it's not very collaborative to basically say to the VDs, "Here, color this in for me." The not-at-all-thought-out idea that pops into my head is something like layer comps in Photoshop... there might be separate Wireframe and VD comps where the VD comp uses the WF comp as its starting point. Another issue is the ability to create re-usable components. It sounds like you're already planning to build this in, but I want to elucidate the need a little bit. Currently, I use and love Axure, and have gotten spoiled by some of its great functionality. Axure allows me to create two (well three, but I only use two) types of custom components (called masters). You create masters and then drag them to wireframe pages. With normal masters, editing the master changes *every instance* of that master. Any wireframing/prototyping tool I use MUST have this functionality. You can also set masters to be "custom widgets," meaning that when you change the master, its instances are NOT updated. This is useful for things like page types and design patterns. Again, this is *must have* functionality. Another issue... I don't want to have to buy five pieces of software to do this. I want to do it *one.* I'm not going to code any Flex, so that one won't count. But I don't want to have to import stuff into Thermo from all the other Adobe products. I'd love to be able to just build it in Thermo. I *could* see the argument for doing a lot of the work in Fireworks and then importing to Thermo, but you'd need a major update to FW to make that a viable option. By the way, I'm going to be at Interaction '08 along with other Thermo > folks from Adobe--if you see one of us, please stop us and have a chat! Oh man, you just lost every last second of free time you thought you had. : ) - Fred ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
