[IxDA Discuss] Do Engineers Understand UX documents? (was "Alan Cooper on Software...")

[Bruno Figueiredo]

I think that we need several things so that the documentation we
produce is fully understood by our fellow engineers. I'm an
architect by education so please bear with my analogies. 

1) We need a standardized visual language so that whenever we change
jobs we don't need to learn yet another way to document things.
Architects have their own visual language and it's consistent from
the US to Japan. Any engineer or builder can pick up an architect's
drawing and start building straight-away.

2) We need interactive prototypes for more complex interactions. Even
with a nice set of blueprints, without a cardboard or 3d model no one
would understand how to build a Frank Gehry building. It's just too
complex just for blueprints.

3) We need a clear set of standardized and simple deliverables. A
blueprint has most of what anyone needs to know about a particular
floor in a building. It has links to other drawings as well. But
everything lies mostly on one page. Sometimes UX documentation is
just too scattered (interaction guidelines, wireframes, detailed
object interactions). Put yourself on an engineers shoes. Would you
bother going through a pile of documents just to build the simplest
of things? That's why most of what engineers build upon what we
deliver them is so off on the first iteration.


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Posted from the new ixda.org
http://gamma.ixda.org/discuss?post=22000