[IxDA Discuss] What do these prototyping tools give me? (RE: Axure RP Pro prototyping tool)

[Todd Warfel]

I think another thing that's missing is when these are appropriate.  
For instance, in Dave's case if he's got 5 Designers that are  
familiar w/Adobe and MM tools, then why switch to something like  
Axure or iRise? There's the initial expense. Then the learning curve  
and downtime (soft costs).

Who's going to use or consume the output? There's a mention of a  
"free reader," but frankly, I don't want or need another free reader  
and don't want to make our clients download a free reader. If it  
isn't in something like PDF, HTML, SWF, or DOC, then I can't be  
bothered with it.

 From all that I've gathered so far, these are decent requirements  
gathering tools, but you'd be better off prototyping on paper or with  
Flash/HTML.

What about ongoing maintenance? Some of our projects have been  
running for 1.5 years or more. There's been some changes. Maintenance  
is a big issue for us.

On May 10, 2006, at 11:22 PM, David Heller wrote:

> [Please voluntarily trim replies to include only relevant quoted  
> material.]
>
> If people concede the point about these tools not working well as a
> conversion prototype > word platform (which is what I'm hearing),  
> and then
> it is just about prototyping, then ... Why these tools?
> What do they offer that another development environment doesn't? I  
> mean
> iRise and Serena have pretty heft licensing costs. That is pretty  
> hard to
> justify when I can great prototypes in Dreamweaver or Flash or Flex  
> 2.0 or
> the upcoming tools in the Expression Suite from MS, just as easily.
>
> What am I missing here? Seriously, I'm about to head into a HUGE  
> hosted
> enterprise application re-design, and I'd really like to know what I'm
> missing out on. I've looked at these tools, but a separate Wiki for
> gathering requirements + Dreamweaver seem to be working fine. So  
> I'm really
> curious about this. $10k for a $5m project doesn't seem like a lot  
> to ask
> for, but it is still $10k .. But compare that to $5k for 5 licenses of
> Studio 8 by Adobe, and I just don't see the cost benefit analysis.  
> Help me!
>
> Aspects that people didn't talk about are:
> Maintainable objects
> Sharing across teams, and within a team
> Annotating (was sorta mentioned)
> Converting prototypes to something consumable by other teams (Dev &  
> QC jump
> to mind).
>
> I think Jay hit one requirement on the head and that is being able  
> to create
> data sets to be used for usability testing.
>
> -- dave
>
>
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Cheers!

Todd R. Warfel
Partner, Design & Usability Specialist
Messagefirst | designing and usability consulting
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Email:    todd at messagefirst.com
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In practice, they are not.