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

[Joseph Selbie]

Bruno,

I too am hopeful that it won't take 5000 years to develop standards for IX
design :).

I just don't think it is simply a matter of agreeing on *existing*
standards. What we are designing is rapidly evolving, which is requiring an
equally rapid evolution of the tools we use to design. I can imagine a day
in the not too distant future where we have one type of design tool that
outputs any kind of documentation -- one to many, not many to one. If you
want to see the design as a working prototype it could give it to you -- in
any of a variety of standards. If you want to see the design as a series of
schematic drawings it could give it to you -- in any of a variety of
standards. We see glimpses of this kind of tool in some of the
interoperations between programs such as Photoshop and Dreamweaver or
Fireworks and Flash -- but these are just the beginning. Someday we'll have
our version of AutoCAD Inventor.

As to architecture being 4D, I think this is a bit disingenuous. Everything
is in fact 4D. The universe we inhabit is 4D. And of course any design
process, architecture or any other, necessarily requires an awareness of
this reality. But an architect only needs to take into account the *fact*
that people will interact with the building. With IXD it is necessary to
*design* the way people can interact with an application, or website, or OS
with a moment by moment, click by click level of detail and accuracy.

I'm sure one can make a case that people interact with buildings. But I
think it is also fair to say that nearly all of those interactions are
commonly understood and accepted. The interactions that we in our profession
are designing are often completely new, and cannot rely on accepted
understanding to be communicated -- thus the need for the current complexity
of design documentation.

Joseph Selbie
Founder, CEO Tristream
Web Application Design
http://www.tristream.com

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com
[mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of Bruno
Figueiredo
Sent: Friday, November 02, 2007 8:08 AM
To: discuss at ixda.org
Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Do Engineers Understand UX documents? (was "Alan
Cooper on Software...")

As Bruno Zevi once wrote, Architecture is indeed 4D. You can't
develop your perception of a building without walking through it.
That's the 4th dimension and why 3D walkthroughs are so popular.

Yes, architecture had a lot of time to develop standards, but mankind
as produced more information on the last decade than all of the
previous centuries combined. To achieve standardization we have to
communicate, and communication is as easy as ever.

What we have to do is to take clues from existing 4D representations.
And build upon what each one of us had to develop for our own
projects. If we managed to come up with solutions for our problems by
ourselves, just imagine what we could do together.

Jesse James Garret already started this whit a basic set of visual
representations. We just have to improve upon it.