On 30/01/2008, Narciso Jaramillo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Coming in on this thread a bit late...lots of good stuff here! > > David Malouf wrote: > > > The Thermo stuff is definitely interesting, but thinks like a graphic > > designer, not like an interactive designer. Expression in their > > tutorials anyway is thinking similarly. > > > Basic assumption that is false that both are making is that I'm going > > to make a finalized high fidelity graphic UI as a flat screen to start > and > > THEN add interactive elements. This goes against the very way IxD's > have > > been working. > > 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.
That's good to hear Narciso. The ease of creating custom components is going to be vital here as the potential problem is that the tool you use only really thinks of interaction in certain ways - like a windows UI or a web form. Whilst most of what I work on is web I often find myself creating custom forms of interaction so the customization is vital. What is also required is to substittued lo-fi with hi-fi later on in the process. If the prebuild widgets are too hi-fi it makes the lo-fi element of the interface sketches look strange. > 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? Spot on. It's also about diagrams and flow that relate to these sketches. Notations, clickable site maps and user flow are all used by the agencies i have worked in the UK and I all major web agencies now use these in the creation of their websites. The same appears to be true in the US, so I wouldn't underestimate the audience of a more diagram based tool as I would say very few large websites are build these days without going through a fairly standard flow, site map, wireframe process. > 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. See above for a start. To simplify things I would love to be able to draw a flow or site map and then be able to link these to my wireframes. I'd like to be able to set cases (a limited set of variables like Axure) and I'd like to have an annotation layer that allows paper/pdf presentation and screen based presentation. The wireframes created tend to fall into two main categories - functional pages (forms, interactive tools and heavily interactive elements) and content (text, pictures and pages where interaction is about changing the view of the content). The content pages often take the form of 'templates', one wireframe covering at times the majority of the site, but both the functional and content templates share elements so the ability for parts to inherited (and understand their context) is another thing I'd like to see in any interaction design tool. At the moment I'm looking at Flash and Axure to try and create a new kind of wireframes that include interaction and allows prototyping for client/user validation so if Thermos can deliver as much drawing ability (multiple pages/screens is a must have) as Visio but allows more on top then it starts to become a viable contender for a Information Architect / User Experience / Interaction Design tool. It's just in the teams I work in the graphic designers are part of a team and folks like myself are the ones that create architecture and main interaction for a project. If you'd like more detail or examples feel free to contact me. -- Stewart Dean ________________________________________________________________ *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
