We have also begun to experiment with a wiki for the reasons you stated. For drawings we have used Visio. Because Visio has such customization and automation ability, it has been the best so far. If you dig in and create some custom templates and stencils, then you can really move fast.
As an aside, I just figured out how to create glue points for all objects in the stencils. All of the widgets have one. This allows me to glue the labels to the form elements and the form elements to each other. When you building the UI everything snaps into place with perfect and even spacing. We have been using an object oriented approach to our wireframes and specs (a description of which will be out on our blog after the holidays). But this approach allows you to easily deal with complexity. We looked at some of the prototyping and specing tools out (Axure, iRise, ProcessView Composer), but have not found any that can handle a great deal of complexity. For example, one of our clients has a page within the booking process that is made up of 12 modules. Not all modules will always be displayed, some will be displayed based on the role you play. The form they can take on can be different based on your role, actions you did on a prior page, actions you have taken during a prior session, or actions you are taking on that page now. When you do the math, you end up with over 14,000,000 possible states to that page. I have not found any of the prototyping or specing tools that can handle this. Nick Iozzo Principal User Experience Architect tandemseven 847.452.7442 mobile [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.tandemseven.com/ From: Michael Tuminello Sent: Fri 12/28/2007 8:03 AM To: IxDA list Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Documenting interaction design specification I like wiki. Wiki and mostly Fireworks, because it does both vector and bitmap, and exports to a number of formats (and the frames and pages are very handy for working with graphic screens that change only partially - think states of an app, or webpages). For diagrams I sometimes use Keynote or Omni Graffle. I will also occasionally do an animated demo in flash. some of the things I like about using a wiki: versioning - mediawiki saves all the old versions so I can rollback or just diff against an old version easily accessible to everyone only one copy of the doc, and the most current one is always in the same place there are a number of things that are not great (must upload images rather than cut and paste, restricting access can be a pain...) but overall I am a wiki-holic. I also find that thinking in either an outline format or a numbered list format (common wiki formats, at least on mediawiki) is surprisingly helpful. specifications are not the kind of thing that you want to make more verbose than necessary. HTH - MT On Dec 28, 2007, at 12:40 AM, Sachendra Yadav wrote: > What tools do you use for documenting interaction design > specification. > > I create the interaction model for screens and the flow diagrams and > in MS Visio and import them in MS Word where the interaction model and > flows are described in detail. > > Is there a better, more efficient way to do this? > > Cheers > Sachendra > ________________________________________________________________ > *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 ________________________________________________________________ *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 ________________________________________________________________ *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
