Wow, what a well-reasoned argument! That was fun to read. OK, I'm game. How
do we make it more powerful without sacrificing the simplicity? Can we agree
that we want the final product to require no more than, say , 30 minutes of
training so that a non-programmer can use it?
Hal Helms
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-----Original Message-----
From: Patrick McElhaney [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2001 10:11 AM
To: Fusebox
Subject: RE: WireFrame Demo Online
> Further in my role as DA, let me argue that it's important to realize that
> things tend towards complexity until the point they are no longer
> useful, at
> which someone looks for something simple until...and the whole
> cycle begins
> ever anew. The wireframe simply gives the prototype people something to
> start from. Its virtue is its simplicity and speed--not power and
> extensibility.
Thanks Hal. That makes a lot of sense. But still I can't help but wonder:
What if we can have all four of those virtues?
I think the real problem is that as things get more complex, they tend
to get bloated. The learning curve and development time grow with every
new feature. But I don't believe it necessarily has to be that way. I
think new features can be added transparently, so that the existence of
new features won't have any impact on the way we do things. We don't
even have to know about them.
For example: There are hundreds of elements and attributes in
HTML 4.0, but anyone can learn to use it within a few hours. Some of
the people on this list have done fantastic things with advanced
features such as layers, but we can all still hammer out a functional
page in a matter of seconds.
What I'm afraid of is I'll be presenting a wireframe to a client and
he'll say, "Can you make that a pop-up window?" or "Can you add a
marker that shows which pages are have access restrictions?"
Simple little things like that could make the wireframe a much more
effective communication tool. It would be nice to be able to show
up with a toolbox full of little goodies like that. Besides we'd
get bonus points for being able to say, "As a matter of fact, I
can do that. And.... here it is!"
The danger of course is that there would be tremendous opportunity to get
carried away with all of the added features. Again, HTML is a perfect
example. Remember the first site you ever did? Now, remember the
*second* site you did, once you discovered the marvels of the BLINK and
FONT tags? As long as we're responsible about how we use the added
features, the format should remain very simple, legible, and
easy to manipulate in the middle of a meeting.
I think we *can* have power and extensibility (and diuturnity!) without
sacrificing simplicity and speed.
And if I can get you to bite on that idea, I'll let you in on how I
think wireframes could be used as a tool during development -- not as
some complex Rational-esque code generator but as a simple
communication tool.
Patrick
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