MNteractive

Ben Moore, from Curbly, talks about the need for a project to start with the interface design. All his points are dead on.

In my decade of experience, a website isn’t real to clients until they see some pictures, sketches, something, anything. With this in mind, my goal is to provide initial wireframes (black and white skeletons of the website) earlier rather than later. Something that represents current thinking, grounds the conversation, and provides a malleable vision. Without a visual artifact conversations quickly fly into the ether, and you quickly spend cycles speculating what do build when you should be building. I talked about this need on my other blog.

The most productive meetings are where the visual artifact or prototype is revised in real time, rather than capturing changes in notes. This gives clients something to digest immediately that represents current thinking. No waiting, and no “homework”. There’s a point where the project team runs out of information - even with a prototype. When you reach that point, stop revising and get more information or move to the next stage of development. Again, don’t spin cycles speculating - while wireframes are cheap, changing and changing back and back again is demoralizing.

Ben’s reminder that “The interface is the product” needs to be taken to heart by information architects and interaction designers as well. Wireframes and flows are not a web application - they’re a communication tool, a conversation starter. To me, using them as anything more is mistaking a tree for the forest.

A client this morning referred to me as “Santa” - because they tell me all their wishes for their app and I return with a nicely packaged interface. Fits perfect - the metaphor, not the suit.