IDEAS

We usually have to rapidly prototype website UI all the time. We’re asked all the time, what’s the best program to wireframe within. Yes, we use OmniGraffle, Adobe InDesign, as well as Microsoft Visio to properly document UI screens and flows, but that’s usually not where we start.

Working with programs are usually slow and cumbersome; not only that, but they force us to think within their own limited set of constructs.

We start with a pencil, eraser, and paper. It not only helps us to produce screens quickly, it helps us to push ourselves to create multiple variations of screens to fully explore different interaction models.

“But Pinaki, I can’t draw?!?!”, you say. After I give you a mocking laugh, I’ll tell you that anyone can draw. Go ahead, pick up a pencil and paper. Draw a line. Now, draw a rectangle. Next, draw a circle. How about a star? If the objects on your paper can be identified by someone else, then you can sketch UI and wireframes.

Geekchix.org’s Ivana Jurcic posted a lovely collection of printable paper-based wireframe templates and sketch books. Perfect for printing and prototyping.

Thank you Ivana, for the great post and photo for our homepage.

Breaking news…. but not broken by me

Ran into this over at Mashable. Have to admit, competition is awesome for the public in general.  If it wasn’t for Apple kicking azz and taking names in the last decade with the Ipod and Iphone, we’d all still have “Smart” phones like the blackberry… man I can’t stand that device…  (10, 9, 8, calm down now)….

Now it seems like any product coming out has to have an amazing look and touch functionality to even compete.  Now it seems Microsoft is throwing their hat in the mix with the Courier Tablet.  It looks amazing, and it’s even been rumored that an LW employee who is a hardcore Mac user (who will not be named) is looking forward to the device.  Hopefully RJay will let me play with it once he gets his hands on one… ooooops

Here’s some of the post:

“As we were clued into by earlier leaks, the Infinite Journal is the key metaphor for Courier. It’s like an enormous notebook for collecting pretty much any kind of content: clippings from the web, your own notes, diagrams and drawings, photos from the on-board camera, etc. Each item gets a timestamp and geotag, and you can add more tags for better searchability as well.

Several key “views” into your Journal are detailed in the leaked document, including a Smart Agenda that acts as a sort of a Cliff Notes representation of your entire journal, making important items visible at a glance. The Journal Overview is another style of at-a-glance window into the journal contents, with an integrated search interface. The Library is the main file browser metaphor that organizes everything by type. The left screen acts as a “favorites” tray where you can sticky your most important apps and projects in one place.

Also detailed is the Browser (pictured below), allowing you to easily clip content from the web into your journal. You can also flip through your history with a vertical Cover Flow-like index card system. Another handy organization metaphor is the ability to “tuck” items into the device’s spine to temporarily store something and move it from one section of your journal to another.”

Read the whole post here

Week 44

This past week’s themes included all hands on deck, the art of proposal writing, and a Local Wisdom Halloween.

First, I wanted to start by congratulating members of the LW team, David Spira (Information Architect), Christine Robinson (Project Management), Pinaki Kathiari (Director of User Experience), and RJay Haluko (Sr. Web Designer), for the execution of a very large proposal. It was certainly a team effort and we got it done. Speaking of getting proposals done, there is definitely an art to writing proposals. No two proposals are the same. Our proposal process is as follows:

• Gaining an understanding of a customer’s business needs
• Aligning customer business needs with Local Wisdom expertise
• Defining project scope, timeline, and cost

The finesse is always in the documentation. The final proposal should always speak to a customer’s unique business needs, the overall execution strategy, as well as the personality of the project.

Last week rounded off with one of our intranet Design Discovery meetings run by RJay. We believe having e v e r y o n e on a project team to discuss creative, helps drive our work as well as achieve consensus on the overall design direction. Engaging workshops with interactive creative Q&A makes for truly productive sessions.

Halloween was celebrated on Friday at our office, with some interesting, fun, and original costumes. Look out for pictures very soon!!!

Week 45 looks to be busy one. So expect some good commentary.

With that said, so long and till next week.

This weekly review has been brought to you by Derrick Larane, Director of Sales here at Local Wisdom.

You ever wonder how a website gets developed? Take a look at how we come up with the blueprints for your site as Pinaki discusses LW’s Information Architecture process. Send requests for screencasts to share@localwisdom.com and follow us at twitter.com/localwisdom and visit us at http://blog.localwisdom.com

Show Notes: Original Keynote slides saved as PDF

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Week 43

This week’s themes included, for the love of Information Architecture, teamwork, sharing, Local Wisdom bringing the funny, bowling with wisdom and customer satisfaction.

The team had a second Information Architecture review meeting for one of our current intranet design projects. As an observant and empathic Account Manager, for this engagement, I was taken aback by the discussions, interactions, and overall teamwork between LW, the customer and their IT partners. What an awesome meeting. It’s always great when technology, creative, and customer business needs are aligned early. Wireframes, site maps, and content inventories can be a bit much to swallow but with a balanced diet of candid dialogue with a side of funny makes for productive working meetings.

Mid week our company had our monthly \\Share Meeting. We take this opportunity to come together and present new ideas, fresh perspectives, and also hear about the details and outcomes of recently completed projects.  These are always fun and enlightening sessions. Pinaki Kathiari and Christine Robinson really do an awesome job of putting them together each month.

Upon completion of the sharing process it was time to bowl.  North Brunswick Brunswick Zone was the location and fun was the situation.  For photo evidence please click here. Shout out to Hope Zelinski and Joseph Campbell for making the trek to the outing.

I end this week with a quote from Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder, “We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.” Those words were very evident this week. Till next week. This weekly review has been brought to you by Derrick Larane, Director of Sales here at Local Wisdom.

Mike just forwarded two great links for designing websites in Microsoft SharePoint. Great read for all.

Real World Branding with SharePoint Server 2007 Publishing Sites (Part 1 of 2)
Gives an overview and covers the strategy, architecture, and design portions of a website project.

Real World Branding with SharePoint Server 2007 Publishing Sites (Part 1 of 2)
Gets into the nuts and bolts of developing the SharePoint site using SharePoint Designer

So print is dead. We see that with newspaper sales declining and whatnot.

With Google Wave, we see the beginning of the end for email. Email was developed 40 some odd years ago, even before the Internet. It’s time to give it the makeover that technology can now afford.

Introducing Google Wave, an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation
and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

Grab some colleagues, pop some popcorn (this is long video), and get ready for this ride.

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

Well, I guess its not a secret before. I’m now salivating to see the Apple version even more. The competition will be good for driving prices down.

Check out the full article Gizmodo, Courier: First Details of Microsoft’s Secret Tablet, there is also a video that shows the interface and interactions.

Found this great case study as I’m researching the architecture for our latest Intranet project that will be implemented in SharePoint.

We find that a good number of Intranet sites serve up a great deal of information to their audiences. Yes, audiences need to find information quick, but just as important they  need to easily understand the information structure on their first visit so when they come back their experience will be even easier.

Here is the SharePoint Team Blog post: How We Did It – Tag Driven Information Architecture using MOSS 2007 for the New Zealand Ministry of Transport

By the way, this is made it to the Top 10 Intranets of 2008 by the Nielson Norman Group.

Fred Beecher from Evantage Consulting blogged about something that we’ve been trying to integrate through all of our UX designs for customers.

I’ve used the phrase, “We’re way past usability, we’re headed for delightability” to say that the system that we design must and by all means be usable, but we want to take a step forward and make them delightful. (I’m tired of using the word delightful BTW

Fred in his post: Playfulness, Usability, & Context: The Three Pillars of a Delightful User Experience, runs a small evaluation on 2 iPhone apps that support similar functions while the UX of one is more playful than the other.

His research shows…

“Fun isn’t always the new usable. There are situations in which usability is more important than playfulness and those in which it’s the other way around. The delight that playfulness contributes to an experience depends on the context surrounding that experience.”

And he’s devised 3 hypothesis:

1. Usability inspires more delight than playfulness does in situations in which tasks are clearly defined and use is infrequent.
2. Playfulness inspires more delight than usability does in situations in which the tasks are amorphous and use is frequent Playfulness also inspires more delight when there is a clear benefit to overcoming the learning curve inherent in playful interactions
3. The learnability of a playful system is inversely proportional to the level of interaction at which that playfulness occurs.