Pauric Pauric — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:36 GMT

I would just like to give a nod to Omnigraffle. While its not on par with the likes of Axure, its a very nice combination of vector drawing, stencils functionality and layers. Sort of visio meets illustrator, without all the visio nuances.

http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnigraffle/

Excellent for flow defs, worth a look for wireframes on a budget. No interaction capabilites.

Pauric Pauric — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 21:04:25 GMT

Dave, on Abstraction;

While not countering what you’ve said I was left with the impression you believe its better to reduce abstraction. I’m not sure that should be a goal in itself, I would say its better to push out the abstraction to the right level for the given interaction.

For example, the very first cars used something akin to a boat tiller for steering. It had poor mechanical advantage so a steering wheel was invented/implemented which added a layer of abstraction. Similarly, if we were to blindly reduce the abstraction in an interface it would look like a display panel from the Matrix. Or, we’d all be assembler programmers (o; I like to think that there are three parties when it comes to abstraction; the user, the system and the ‘tasks’. Its the designer’s job to triangulate the design to meet the requirements and constraints of those three.

Also, I feel the level of abstraction needed is based on the user’s understanding of the system’s operation/capabilites as well as their experience in their domain. As that understanding increases then the abstraction can be reduced. My users often graduate from web to CLI when they achieve a level of experience and search for better flow.

Its a complex topic and I’d really appreciate your thoughts on how to arrive at a balanced abstraction.

Great article btw – thanks, pauric

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Pauric Pauric