I'd like to validate the following sentiment that dawned at me. Wireframes and prototypes suggest primarily that the design solutions are presented visually, annotated with callouts or footnotes at the sidebar.
However, the same thing can be also presented in form of documentation (text or spreadsheet). Moreover, during certain phases of wireframing/prototyping, it is often more desirable to abstract from the visual layouts and rather to work with the documentation. My idea is that the wireframing/prototyping tool should allow the designer to work with the both views (visual and documental) simultaneously or interchangeably, when either is more appropriate. While the both views share the same data source, i.e. the changes made to the wireframe are reflected in the documentation, and vice versa. The existing tools used for wireframing and prototyping seem to underestimate the frequent need for annotating and documenting design elements. If you need to annotate something, you a) draw your footnote or callout as a yet another graphic object, and maintain its connection to the annotated object manually, because the tool does not "understand" it is an annotation or b) select the element to be annotated and enter plain text somewhere far in the sidebar "Properties" panel, and then lose it out of sight when you select something else. Both approaches become clunky when you need to create different layers of annotations for different audiences, which is a common task. Afterwards, the existing tools can usually spit out a functional spec in Word or PDF that is rather a formal red-tape "deliverable". Or if you are not satisfied, you can go to a word processor or a spreadsheet and write the documentation manually (and I often do), but then it will not be connected to the wireframe/prototype anyhow but in your mind, so you have to maintain them in sync manually as well. Besides, you find yourself dealing with many documents and tools instead of one. Am I on the right track? What are your hardest challenges of documenting design? Have I overlooked something? Thanks, Oleg. -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/The-Documentation-View-of-Design-tp16967831p16967831.html Sent from the ixda.org - discussion list mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ________________________________________________________________ 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
