[IxDA Discuss] Expression Blend a "review"

[Chris Bernard]

There's nothing I disagree with here that you're saying. Specifically around..." As mentioned by Cooper, coded prototypes tend to lead to a final product that is based on flawed or inefficient structure."

I'd even go further and say today prototypes are really about facilitation among all the disparate groups in an organization that need to get their head around something.

"...The more you need to clean up and consider code efficiencies during iterations, the more system centered you design." is also true. But I think one place where we get in trouble with prototypes (and perhaps the word I should use here really is 'proof of concept') is that we often make decisions based on a prototype that eventually prove pretty hard (or impossible) to implement and this is after things have been approved and after we're in production.

That's rather impossible to do with Blend in its current state and perhaps make Blend and interesting tool to do a POC with versus a tool that's a bit more blue sky but still a proxy for a final deployment. Blend might in fact make the POC model for Windows application development work much better and it's safe to say that an interface created in Blend is going to be ripe for pushing into production.

But to be clear and as many on this board would probably agree, creating an application or a design solution is much like painting a room. The detail work is in the planning and the exploration that occurs in front of actual production.

If I look at how a traditional interaction design firm or a Doblin or an Ideo or <insert firm here> that does competent design work rarely is the tool set a critical issue for figuring out WHAT to do, it really only matters when it comes time to figure out HOW to do something. More important are the processes and frameworks we bring to these analysis, synthesis and conceptualization phases.

Most of the software that I create still starts at a white board and with post it notes, sharpies, notebook paper and a digital camera and then reaching for a tool like Visio, Omnigraffle or InDesign. I suppose Blend might lend itself for some explorations around the nuance of timing and other interface interactivity but this is really a place for tools to play.

Big D design is much more like consulting in my mind. People look at a Bain or a McKinsey and compare, frameworks, processes and models--not who is using InDesign versus Visio for artifact creation. There's a big part of design (perhaps the most important part) that really has nothing to do with tools or platforms except from an ROI or market adoption perspective.

What do others think? Do tools matter in Big D design from an execution perspective?


Chris Bernard
Microsoft
User Experience Evangelist
chris.bernard at microsoft.com
312.925.4095



Blog: www.designthinkingdigest.com
Design: www.microsoft.com/design
Tools: www.microsoft.com/expression


-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com [mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of Christian Sosa-Lanz
Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2007 5:57 PM
To: IxDA Discuss
Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Expression Blend a "review"

Chris, was starting to follow your positioning of Blend until you
started talking about prototyping.

As a production tool, Blend seam to be a great asset to the industry.
It allows the designer and coder to work together during production,
separating the visual, interactive layer from the code. But as a
prototyping tool it seams to hit the same issues that any existing
coded prototype would. As mentioned by Cooper, coded prototypes tend
to lead to a final product that is based on flawed or inefficient
structure. The key to prototypes, whether they be paper or digital is
that they are throw away. The more you need to clean up and consider
code efficiencies during iterations, the more system centered you
design.

Other design industries practice this throw away prototype approach.
Their reasons for using a different material for mock-ups seam to be
similar to ours cheaper, quicker and more flexible. Is there
something unique to interaction design that causes us to prototype
with steel or is it that our industry has not yet matured into this
conclusion?

Christian
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