“Communicating the User Experience” – reviewed by Jane Pyle.
From the post:
I’ll admit it. I haven’t spent a lot of time in my career creating beautiful wireframes. For the past four years I’ve been designing mobile apps for internal use in a large corporation and the first casualty in every project has been design documentation. I’ve been able to successfully communicate my designs using sketches, dry erase boards, and/or rapid prototyping, but the downside of this approach became quite clear when our small team disbanded. As a new team was formed, the frequently asked question of “so where is the documentation for this project” was met with my sheepish gaze.
So I was very curious to read Communicating the User Experience and perhaps learn some practical methods for creating UX documentation on a shoestring time budget. What’s the verdict? Have I seen the documentation light and decided to turn over a new leaf? Read on.
As Jane discovers, there are no shortcuts to documentation, UX or otherwise.
A guide to tools for creating a particular style of documentation can be helpful to beginners, as Jane notes, but not beyond that.
Creating documentation is not a tool driven activity. It is a more creative activity than creation of software or an interface.
Software works with deterministic machines and can be tested as such. Documentation has to work with non-deterministic users.
The only test for documentation being whether it is understood by those non-deterministic users.
Rather than facing the harder task of documentation, many prefer to grunt and wave their sharpies in the air.
It may be amusing, but it’s not documentation.