Mário Andrade

Although it may seem as a parody, and kind of is, it still passes the message.

When you speak about Information architecture (IA) regarding websites you are refering to the conceptualization the website layout. An Information Architect has the function to, just like a real architect, create the most usable environment for the users. They do not design, they do not program, they build and develop concepts.

For more about Information Architecture or IA visit Wikipedia’s page about the subject.

Referral: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_architecture

A very important aspect when you wireframe is that the designer should feel comfortable and understand the idea you want to pass to him and not get stuck to the display of the wireframe. Meaning that a square doesn’t need to be a square, the designer should be creative.

The video was create by Michael Leis and as he describes on the youtube video page wireframing is defining a communication strategy and I have seen many wireframes that although with interesting concepts, best practices, good architecture and so on many times lacks on communication.

Increasingly, as designers of interactive systems (spaces, processes and products for people), we find ourselves stretching the limits of communication tools to explore and document what it will be like to interact with the things we design.

We describe wireframing as a form of design communication that enables stakeholders, team members, users and clients to gain first-hand appreciation of existing or future problem spaces and solutions.

We create wireframes to inform both design process and design decisions. Wireframes range from sketches and different kind of models at various levels of fidelity looks like, behaves like, works like to explore and communicate propositions about the design and its context.

We think that the wireframing strategies user experience designers use are often constrained by the tools they feel most comfortable with: problem space, domain, expertise, theme, context of problem, bias towards types of design tools and documents, timeliness of artifacts created. For this reason, a session that attacks one business problem from the perspective of four different designers will provide attendees with a unique understanding and set of strategies and tactics to improve their own practice.

To be honest from what I’ve seen collaborative prototyping isn’t that collaborative. Normally there’s one specialized individual making wireframes according to what they find to be best practices on the web. What happens in most cases is you talk to one maybe 2 people and say “Hey what do you think?”, when everything seems right you pass it to design and tell them to work their magic. So collaborating your work with other people that will certainly suggest something that goes against what you find to be the best practices doesn’t sound that exciting. At this point you have spent some time prototyping and decided to pass it to design and suddenly someone from marketing looks at it and understands that what the client wants from a certain part of their website is something a little different from what you prototyped. What do you do know? I’ll leave that question for you to answer.

The following video is a 24 minute presentation by Todd Zaki Warfel on Washington University where he shares his insights on collaborative web prototyping and the importance of collecting multiple insights from all the team members to help you achieve an improved result.

If you are interested in knowing more about this subject please consider visiting my article on website wireframes.

Also consider acquiring Todd Zaki Warfel book Prototyping: A Practitioner’s Guide, it’s a very interesting reading that provides you with insights on prototyping, the tools used and basic help to those getting started.