Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Liz Danzico

Liz Danzico — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:43:26 GMT

Chris, the layering idea you suggest is much like the approach I use when reviewing functional specification documents with different teams. Depending on the audience, while reviewing, I’ll take teams through only specific pages or sections. This targeted approach avoids taking an attentive audience through unnecessary detail (rendering them inattentive eventually). The layered visio approach would serve this same purpose. To that end, what we’re discussing seems to be less like decreasing the amount of information, but rather controlling the view of it.

At the same time, I agree with Daniel, there is potential for uncontainable version control issues, and questions about which version/view of the wireframes become the “authoritative source.” Perhaps only in situations where you know the whereabouts of your documents at all times (thus maintaining control over viewership) could you manage the possibility of versioning snafus. It seems that working in-house this kind of control may be easier than it is when one is a consultant, but still not completely predictable.

- Liz

Liz Danzico — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:17 GMT

The first certainly wasn’t, but the second (assuming you mean “drek”) was. It’s an accepted spelling, I believe.

Thanks for helping make B&A better. :)

Liz Danzico — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:18 GMT

Getting rid of the drek does, indeed, include catching typos. Whether things like that are intentional or not, I will never tell!

We are starting to make public our B&A house styleguide so that we can be persistently consistent, revealing our POV on things such as the one-worded “sitemap” and hyphenless “email.” For many years, it’s lived in a private wiki, only accessible to editors. Now, we’ve started to make it public and hope that you can help us build it.

True; at the moment, it is a static page, but we are continuing to build up B&A features. Stay tuned over the next couple of months to watch the evolution…

Liz Danzico — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:23 GMT

Neat. You mention Illustrator and InDesign. Would your solution be program-specific, or, are you intending teh article to be more of a methodology that can be applied across programs?

Liz Danzico — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:27 GMT

Hi Nick -

Thanks so much for your comments.

bq. _The five star ratings used across this site are a combination of red and green, which is completely useless for people like me who are red-green blind._

This is great feedback, and something we will certainly take into consideration when we launch the new design in the upcoming weeks. So sorry for the temporary oversight as we transition to a new design!

bq. _And while I’m here, I find the stuff at the top of the right-hand column very obscure._

Yes. We’re working on a more useful display of data in the right column. The goal is to show people active people, active content, heated discussions (perhaps like this one!) at a glance. But we know that the current version is not ideal.

Liz Danzico — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:30 GMT

After reading this post, I wondered if we should think about ways of linking to documents or other files. Would that be useful?

Liz Danzico — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 18:17:51 GMT

Patrick, it would be interesting to continue thinking through your idea, using this as a starting point. I’d like to see more extensive explanations, visual examples, etc.

Liz Danzico — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:31 GMT

Matt – I’m going to remove this comment then, per your rescindment.

Liz Danzico — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:32 GMT

I deleted your other “suggestion” Matt. Sorry for the confusion.

Liz Danzico — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:32 GMT

Ankur: This seems interesting. You might also consider what Max Lord has written about in the past for B&A:

*Why Is That Thing Beeping? A Sound Design Primer*
(http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/why_is_that_thing_beep…)

Liz Danzico — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:48 GMT

Hi Andre -

I’ve just fixed the email issue—thanks for pointing it out. As for the print issue, I’ve forwarded it on to our developer to investigate.

Thanks!

Liz Danzico — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:05 GMT

This is interesting—certainly wayfinding systems can teach us a lot about designing navigation systems and the larger experience that accompanies them. But can you explain more about what you mean by “what is taking place” and how it relates to the web? It would be useful to hear a bit more.

Liz Danzico — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:06 GMT

Hi Ross -

The process is generally this:

You write a story idea here. You can either write your own idea, or suggest that someone else write an article. Readers and editors (we hope mostly readers) comment on the idea, helping you refine things, encourage you in directions that you may not have thought about.

The editorial team monitors this area, and accepts story ideas that are well on their way or are particularly timely. It’s at that point that an editor will contact you about getting started. The process from that point on is explained here: http://www.boxesandarrows.com/about/submission_guidelines…. Hope that helps.

In your case, I thought it an interesting idea, and wanted to hear more about it. Since others hadn’t commented yet, I thought I’d chime in!

Liz Danzico — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 20:19:35 GMT

Great to hear Michael! There are three or four more in the queue with similar thought leaders—people just outside the interaction design purview. You should see them in the next few issues.