Viaeterna

Great article on Smashing Magazine about the Do’s and Don’ts of prototyping and wireframing web sites and user interface design.

The old adage, “a picture speaks a thousand words” captures what user interface prototyping is all about: using visuals to describe thousands of words’ worth of design and development specifications that detail how a system should behave and look. In an iterative approach to user interface design, rapid prototyping is the process of quickly mocking up the future state of a system, be it a website or application, and validating it with a broader team of users, stakeholders, developers and designers. Doing this rapidly and iteratively generates feedback early and often in the process, improving the final design and reducing the need for changes during development.

Prototypes range from rough paper sketches to interactive simulations that look and function like the final product. The keys to successful rapid prototyping are revising quickly based on feedback and using the appropriate prototyping approach. Rapid prototyping helps teams experiment with multiple approaches and ideas, it facilitates discussion through visuals instead of words, it ensures that everyone shares a common understanding, and it reduces risk and avoids missed requirements, leading to a better design faster.

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I started following Tony Chester of Onwired some time ago, they have a great blog with tips for developers and business’s alike. This is a great piece on iPhone developments for your business. The benefits obviously as well as the potential pitfalls and misconceptions.

To quote Tony:

“It’s not just the fact that there are more than 50 million iPhones in use, or that they’re largely in the hands of the people making the big buying decisions — you know, the C-Level execs. What I’m really excited about is that it’s become easier than ever to design websites and apps for the digital equivalent of a Swiss army knife. I’ll just say it: the time is right to start integrating iPhone tools into your online marketing strategy. Nuff said.”

Good read, get to work and make something interesting.

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Here’s an interesting article on UX Design versus UI Development. These terms are very much in vogue these days, and yet very few people really understand the differences involved and how they relate to each other. This pretty much sets the tone:

“At the heart of the tension between them is the fact that most UI Developers consider themselves—and sometimes rightfully so—to be UI Designers. The coding part is like Picasso’s having to understand how to mix paint. It’s not the value they add, just the mechanics of delivering the creative concepts.”

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