I'd like to apologise for my previous post about the wireframe demo... I'm
a little under caffienated this morning and I was thinking entirely of
something completely separate to what I was talking about...
having replaced a good deal of my blood with infused caffeine, I'll try
again.
We've been working on a demonstration intranet application in fuseboxed
spectra, which is where my mind was wandering to when I blathered in my last
post). It will a great thing to be able to show clients, as it's basically
a central brain where everything runs from. Users only need to know how to
use a browser to manage evry function and resource on the intranet. We plug
in various bits and pieces to demonstrate it's seperability and
customisable....ness. It's funky, and shiny.
however, the wireframe principle is completely different. I'm still trying
to find the time to sit down and examine all the info and the wireframe
proto's themselves, but I've started playing with it. It's like being able
to walk into a client's office, like the movie salesmen of old and just pull
out of my briefcase a foldable portable website that has their own
navigation and demonstrates all the principles of the site they're looking
for. More importantly (and I feel an 'earlier posting plaguarism' coming
on) it gives me the perfect link to start pointing out where things could
go, how things could work, and use it all as one big match to light a fire
under a client who might otherwise spend weeks pontificating and torturing
my stomach ulcers over whether the little graphic seperating the buttons in
the nav ("which incidentally I was thinking (HA!) could do with a drop
shadow, I don't mind telling you...") should be pink or slightly longer...
I get to present Basic. Raw. Functionality. I can keep the client away
from any design ideas, or getting into the "fun" part of thrashing out the
look and feel rather than dulling over the fine points of the backend.
As programmers we're traditionally spotty,shortsighted, with no social
skills and poor personal hygeine. Our part of the development is often
about as appealing as that stereotype to clients - a good many of them don't
really require tying down to keep them away from writing highly detailed
functional specs when they could be talking about animated gifs... The most
important part of the project is getting they way it will work nailed down,
but if we give the client too much in the way of creative they get lost and
we spend ages building templates before we get to develop - and if you let
that happen you can very easily end up with a solution the client believes
you promised them, which isn't going to work with the required back end.
once again I'm beginning to get a little blathery but my point is basically
that if I can present something to a client which quickly gives a vague form
to their ideas, that we can then use to push on with the real core of the
project, my life is a lot easier. They have confidence in me, by seeing
that I both understand what their vision for the site is and that I can
demonstrate those ideas, and how they might come about. That confidence
brings back a little of the power that we used to have - the "they really
know what they're doing, lets sort ourselves out and give them what they
need to work". (I know it's never really like that but I think some people
will see what I mean.) If my client truly believes I understand his thoughs
and needs for the site, and I can steer him in the direction I most need -
I'm sorted. THe wireframe in it's simplicity, can do this for me. There
may well be some things we can add to it - but I need it quick, simple,
rough and easy enough to hand to a salesman or a designer with NO code
knowledge and have it set up and work.
</cf_blather>
Toby Tremayne
Code Poet and Zen Master of the Heavy Sleep
Show Ads Interactive
359 Plummer St
Port Melbourne
VIC 3207
P +61 3 9245 1247
F +61 3 9646 9814
ICQ UIN 13107913
-----Original Message-----
From: Toby Tremayne [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Monday, 26 February 2001 10:32 AM
To: Fusebox
Subject: RE: WireFrame Demo Online
I agree - it would be nice to bring it to a point where we can fiddle with
it and produce those kind of results in front of a client, but not at the
expense of the simplicity of the wireframe itself.
If we carved it in the direction of having "plugins" of code that generate a
bunch of simple things like that, perhaps come up with a simple way to
create a bunch of templates that can be called whenever - even something as
simple as an extendable set of custom tags tha canb e dropped in to
demonstrate those kinds of features.
Again, this draws away form the fact that a wireframe can be assembled in
moments without cfml. But surely there's a middle ground we can find to
allow us to do this?
Toby
Toby Tremayne
Code Poet and Zen Master of the Heavy Sleep
Show Ads Interactive
359 Plummer St
Port Melbourne
VIC 3207
P +61 3 9245 1247
F +61 3 9646 9814
ICQ UIN 13107913
-----Original Message-----
From: Patrick McElhaney [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Friday, 23 February 2001 2:11 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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