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Last week I asked if anyone had used Frame or special-purpose tools to draw
screens layouts as part of a user interface design project. Here are the
results:
Summary
Two main approaches were recommended:
- use screen drawing tools to draw the screens directly
- use prototyping software to draw the screens, then import the captured
images
Screen Drawing Tools:
Freehand + Frame
r pacholke (rpachol9 -at- mail -dot- idt -dot- net) suggested using FreeHand to to draw
the graphical screen components, then overlaying text frames in Frame for
text fields and other user entries. Th text overlay permitted an easy
search and replace when the fields changed.
Frame
David B. Demyan (dbd -at- mendem -dot- com) suggested drawing the screens directly in
Frame. Although arduous, it would be easy to maintain.
Debbie Molinaro (debbiem -at- j51 -dot- com) also recommended drawing the screens
directly in Frame, the benefit being that "writers get to learn the Human
Interface intimately!"
Visio
Steve Evanina (steve -dot- evanina -at- sciatl -dot- com) recommended first creating a basic
template of screen components in Visio , then using it to draw screens. He
prefers Visio to CorelDraw for this.
Prototyping Tools:
Delphi, Paradox, Visual Basic
Ben Laborie (blaborie -at- dees -dot- com) suggested using one of these tools to
construct a prototype system, then to take screen snapshots.
DEMO-IT
Peggy Schillinger (peggy -at- stlnet -dot- com) suggested this updated version of
Dan's Bricklin Demo-II for creating prototypes.
Access
Suzy Davis (aedavis -at- ibm -dot- net) suggested using Microsoft Access to build
prototypes.
______________
Ben Hechter
Northern Telecom
Vancouver BC
ben_hechter -at- nortel-nsm -dot- com
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