Closer To The Ideal

The most concrete way to lower risk, in regards to the creation of websites, is to start small and grow organically. During the design phase, this means you need to adopt an iterative process that demands, with each cycle, the creation of something real.

Boxes and Arrows:

An Iterative Process

While prototyping with XHTML isn’t tied to a specific design process, iterative development seems to effectively leverage its strengths. There are many reasons for this, but perhaps the most significant is that in both cases the prototype, and later the application itself, doubles as a specification. We’ll explore what that means in a bit, but first let’s walk through a suggested process for prototyping with XHTML.Let us start with an overview of the larger design process:In this (iterative) methodology, rather than design the entire application before starting to build it, one designs and builds a unit of the application and then uses what has been built to inform and serve as a starting point for other application units. As with other design methods, the design work begins with sketching, which plays a particularly important role relative to prototyping.

Sketching: A Freeform Question

The term ‘sketching’ refers here to any freeform exploration unconstrained by a specific technology. This includes production of wireframes, which in this model are reframed, as it were, from specification artifact to refined sketch. When thought of, and presented to stakeholders, as sketches, its more natural to discard your wireframes once the design has evolved beyond them. This is usually after a prototype equivalent has been produced. With the design team I work with, we’ve found that when prototyping with XHTML, wireframes often became superfluous, and it’s more effective to go directly from sketch to prototype.

Prototyping: A Concrete Response

Prototyping has a counterpoint relationship to sketching. To paraphrase Bill Buxton, while sketches ask a question—”Is this a good design idea?”— prototypes provide a response. By making the idea manifest, prototypes force upon it the concrete realities and user experience idiosyncrasies of the actual production technology and offer a crisp verdict on the quality of what you dreamed up in drawings.

The Prototype/Build Relationship

When prototyping with XHTML, especially in an iterative model, the build and prototype become very intertwined. If you’re prototyping a new application or product, the XHTML prototype is essentially a rough draft of the actual application. However, when updating the design of an existing application, the production version can serve as the starting point for the prototype of the new solution.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 12th, 2008 at 3:20 am and is filed under design, iterative, iterative design processes, risk management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.