Actually, as someone who has to spend a lot of time manually creating extensive user flows and application and site maps in Visio (and then continually revise them throughout the course of the product lifecycle, since they are used by our testing team) then to see it done with drag-and-drop from a menu item to a new screen or from option buttons to a new screen so quickly and huge masters being able to be dropped (Visio only seems to allow a certain level of complexity for stencils and I haven't been able to figure out what that level is yet!), I thought that the application looked like a nice bridging of the massive gap between Visio and irise, which even with a CS degree (and an MS in Human Factors in Info Design), I find very difficult to use even just to create simple prototypes as the interface is so kludgy, let alone trying to use the more complex features! And while irise will cost you huge amounts of money (chances are, most people don't use most of what they're paying for), GUI Design Studio seemed pretty reasonably priced. Again, just from the video (haven't had time to try out the free trial yet, but I will), I thought that GUI Design Studio looked pretty easy to use and would definitely address one of my needs.
Thanks for sending it out, Thomas! Courtney -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Thomas Davies Sent: Saturday, May 30, 2009 5:36 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] New release of GUI Design Studio To be honest, I'd like to see the usability testing that 3rd party Mac developers do, because I'm fairly sure it is not that much! I'm a Mac user, and many applications 'look' nice, but don't necessarily behave nicely. Mac developers either design their own UIs (Which is the same as Windows' programmers designing UIs. Just owning a Mac doesn't automatically give us taste) or hire an 'Interface Designer' to do the work. However, on many well known Mac 'Interface Designer' websites, I never see any information concerning usability testing or interaction design, so it appears that they are merely designing the interface in Photoshop, making sure it just looks pretty! Also, a lot of the top iPhone applications have been developed and designed by Mac software houses, and they are some of the most appalling pieces of software ever. Heck, some can't even handle a phone call interruption?! It's a fricking phone, and software can't handle interruptions properly! On 30 May 2009, at 22:04, David Drucker wrote: > It's hardly elitist to say that a software company needs to address > the population that they are selling to. Macs may make up 10% of the > browsing population, but they probably are nearing 50% of the design > world (where for a long time, they held over that number). > > But even if they are less than those numbers, Designers usually also > have good taste, so therefore they don't base their decisions of > what tools to use solely on 'the largest market'. So, call me/us > elitist. Frankly, in this context, that's a compliment. > > Seriously, name-calling is not helpful here. From what I saw, the > software looked pretty ugly to me. The clumsy tabbed Project panel > was a classic example of bad Windows software design (putting > everything into tree outlines at the left of the screen because > that's the way File Manager did so in Win 3.1). The fact that it > looks like a programmers IDE makes me suspect that the product was > not developed by designers (even if it is for them). > > Worse still, the documents it appeared to produce looked even more > tasteless and ugly. The Banking Application example suffered from > poor design choices all over the place (badly designed tables, an > unclear affordance for the collapsed panel, etc.). > > I suspect that this is really a package for programmers who have > been forced to do the Design work a designer would do. That's why > it's for Windows only, and that's why the software itself is > designed like a programming environment. That's why some of us look > at it and get a bit nauseous. > > >> Don't they realize that Mac users employ GUI design tools as well > (and probably in disproportionate numbers)? > > I'm sorry, but I just can't let this comment stand. > > What exactly is the problem of choosing the single largest market and > building a product to address it? It doesn't support linux either, or > 3270 display terminals for that matter. > > I find the comments on this thread to be absurdly elitist. Less than > a week ago, we were discussing how pencil and paper are a fine medium > for wireframing. But a simple app that looks like it lets you throw > together ideas quickly and easily, and transport them in small, > effective packages is crap? What exactly is the problem here? > > Is there some rule that professionals must restrict themselves to > "blessed" tools? What about those of us who think those tools suck? > ________________________________________________________________ > 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 ________________________________________________________________ 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 ________________________________________________________________ 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
