[IxDA Discuss] Expression Blend a "review"

[David Malouf]

Hi Chris,

I've been reading your stuff with interest about why Blend is not what
I think it is supposed to be and I realized reading your last message
where I get stuck. It is this concept: "interaction design production
tool for an API ...".

Huh?

Why in the world would there be a difference between an interaction
design production tool and an interaction design tool regardless of
whether it is open like Dreamweaver (HTML being the open technology)
or closed like Flash?

I also think you are misinterpreting something here or maybe taking
the Visio > Blend beef a bit too far. Personally, if I never opened up
Visio again, it would be too soon. Its not that I hate it as a tool, I
just think it is the wrong tool for my job. It is a drawing tool and
to design interactions you need to be able to design with "time" as a
primary manipulated component of your sketches. Yes, I can can do
click through in Visio, but itis clunky.

But I digress ... my real point here is that good design tool is one
that is both in production and out of production. It is a tool that
the designer can use to complete a picture and use that tool to create
a vision. If it is a "production tool" as you suggest, then it is not
a design tool, b/c it seems that the main person who should be using
it is a coder, and not the designer.

I think in one of your articles or someone else's I read they spoke
about the triad of designer, ui coder, developer as the bridge where
the designer works with the UI coder to create something that is
handed off to the developer. But to me that is where I've been for the
last 10 years. Either, I have to be the UI coder, or I have to hire
someone to take on that role. This happens in (D)HTML/AJAX/JSP/ASP,
Flash/Director, C++, .NET1.0, etc. Wherever I've worked there has
always been this intemediary between myself and the "back end" coding
team. What I thought I was hearing from MS was that through XAML
(created by Blend) we were finally going to have the ability to remove
that go-between. But what I think I'm hearing is that the go-between
is not only there, but an intentionality? This is where I get stuck on
where I'm hearing you are saying where Blend is headed or was
intended.

I don't think there is anything inherent in WPF or WPF/E that should
make Blend any more complex than any other markup + scripting tool. It
has some great features, and an amazing component library and
language, but it is as similar to other methods of development as
Windows is to Mac is to Star. Separate style, structure, and user
interaction from logic. Makes sense to me.

Now, if Blend is not "ready" yet to fulfill the promise, that is cool,
but that doesn't mean that it isn't falling short or the mark in a
market filled with tools that achieve similar comparable goals for the
80% that would be using it.

Now there are things in WPF as a desktop application designer, I think
are totally worth keeping to the old model of design & pray (with a
little more stability so you need a bit less prayer), especailly in
the many types of grid components. 8-)

But I could just draw things in designer and hand them off, or draw
things in Blend. But what I draw in either system is going to have to
be reworked just like the HTML work I've been doing for a decade, once
it gets passed through the 2 levels of interpretation necessary to
make the application stable, scalable, and a good performer.

-- dave

-- dave