SIGIA-L Mail Archives: RE: SIGIA-L: hifi deliverables/docs make
RE: SIGIA-L: hifi deliverables/docs make changes harder?
From: Frishberg, Leo (leo.frishberg_at_VideoTele.com)
Date: Mon Apr 30 2001 - 12:15:25 EDT
As an Architect (building-style), I have had to deal with this question from
my first day in school (20 years ago). How complete should the documents be
to get the point across, without investing so much time that the documents
become precious objects themselves?
One of the techniques our professors used was to take a pencil (or gads! a
pen) and draw all over our finished work while they critiqued it during our
presentation to the group. At the time, many of us groaned, but the object
lesson was obvious: the drawings, while representing a substantial
investment of time (not to mention blood, sweat and tears), were transient
and ephemeral. The concepts and intentions were paramount.
The common expression was: "Never draw more in the morning than you can
erase in the afternoon."
Of course, I'll contrast that with another maxim oft heard in the studio:
"Good drawings make good buildings".
One of the huge benefits of CAD systems was introducing the ability to
quickly re-generate drawings. The key leverage in that environment was data
driven documents.
I'm interested - what data driven automation tools are people using to
generate documents, in an effort to reduce the cost of presentation?
_______________________________________
Leo Frishberg-Human Factors / Information Architect
(via Usability Architects, Inc.)
VideoTele.com
1 (503) 594-1349
Phase II
1 (503) 750-6007
_______________________________________
-----Original Message-----
From: Jess McMullin [mailto:jess_at_cognissa.com]
Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2001 7:13 PM
To: sigia
Subject: SIGIA-L: hifi deliverables/docs make changes harder?
Hi all,
christina wrote:
"tons of folks brought stuff to show, from conceptual models to site maps"
An opportune time to ask something I've wondered about lately: does creating
high-fidelity, good-looking, even beautiful documentation make changes to
the project/spec/architecture harder? What I mean is after creating a
beautiful piece of documentation, are you less inclined to change it, even
if it might be better to make some significant changes? Working with Visio,
it might not be a big deal to make site map changes - but working in
Illustrator the same changes can entail hours of work.
Just like we use paper prototypes because people get attached to beautiful
Photoshop mockups (it's easier to make changes to paper prototypes), is
there a similar drawback to creating beautiful docs - is it harder to make
changes then?
I've noticed as I've been creating docs in Illustrator, instead of on paper,
I'm personally finding some resistance (in myself) to going back and making
changes when they appear...
Thoughts? What fidelity were the cocktail hour show&tell things?
cheers,
Jess
ps - yes, I understand working out docs on whiteboard/paper before pulling
out Illustrator, etc. but what about the changes that come after a beautiful
version is created - since many good docs are living docs, changing
throughout the life of a project....
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