Scott McDowell — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:33 GMT

I think the key is to address how simulation tools have changed the way application definition occurs as long as we keep the articles absent of specific vendors for now and focus purely on case studies then we could provide value to the readers.

Here’s a quick example to start things off, my business partner recently used a simulation tool to define both the business and user requirements for a small yet full featured site. The site consisted of about 25 pages, he shipped the simulation over to India for production; the resulting site came back verbatim to the simulation. We have been using this firm on and off for over two years now and this is the first time the results came back the way we defined them. The only difference was instead of providing traditional deliverables such as Word, Visio, etc. he provided a simulation. It has taken some convincing to change their methodology but now that they have seen the gains in time and the reduction in ambiguity I’m sure they will be much more open on future projects to accept our simulations.

Scott McDowell — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 18:17:32 GMT

Hey Patrick,

It’s good to see someone else has a blog dedicated to this space. When you have a few drop over to www.iriseonline.com. In terms of little support I guess it all depends on what deliverable the IA is producing. Each of these products has its own strength and weakness. Axure and Sofea are certainly the most lacking with Serena’s PVC coming in second to iRise. Regardless of which product we’ve used in every case that we’ve used a simulation tool instead of an “old school” tool the final results have been far superior. Of course no tool will fix the lack of core discipline and background in IA skills, everyday we see companies trying to fix their employees lack of core discipline by implementing yet another tool with the hopes that it will magically transform their junior level employee into this master craftsman. I guess that’s the instant gratification world we live in. Have a great weekend.

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Scott McDowell