Re: Modelling and communicating dynamic Web functionality

> On 19 Aug 2009, at 11:08, Alan Litchfield wrote:
>> Whiteboards and post-it notes are great for this.
>
> Matt Carey replied:
>
> I can second this. We have run sessions with the client where we have
> mapped the structure together using post-its. These can be great
> sessions, especially if the client does not have the vocabulary to
> describe what they want the site to do.

Alan and Matt, thanks for the input so far. I shall have to ponder  
before
responding in depth. Concerning the "whiteboards and post-its" strand,
this is essentially how I led our working team's last major discussion.
We read through a previous document about what the site should do,
and I had stacks of sticky notes and wrote them up as what we were
calling "pages". A big glass table was a good surface for displaying
and organising there (a kind of sticky card sort) and we discussed
the relationships between them and some typical user journeys.

Meanwhile, I was keeping track of the implied data elements and
structures.

At the end of the session, I numbered the post-its in a reasonable
narrative sequence and we did a verbal group summary with a
dictaphone -- well, me summarising and the others correcting or
adding. Then I took the dictaphone and the post-its away and
started to write up a document.

I'll return to the business of whether we should steer clear on thinking
about the technology later. I'll just remark here that I have for  
decades
been an advocate, with respect of design for print, of fully  
understanding
the litho printing process, so you don't end up using InDesign to put
together an 18-page magazine with 20 spot colours and several
photos in RGB... It seems to me there should be some equivalent
level of knowledge about CMS-based web design that I should be
aspiring to.

Regards, Conrad
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