Rocky Mountain Internet Users Group
Minutes of the 11 July 2006 meeting, "Visio for
Information Architecture and User Interface Design:
Beyond Boxes and Arrows"

About 65 people attended tonight's meeting. This was a
joint meeting with the Rocky Mountain chapter of ACM
SIGCHI (The Special Interest Group for Computer Human
Interaction). Josh Zapin facilitated and Bette Frick
recorded the minutes.

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Meeting Sponsors

Microstaff (www.microstaff.com) provides refreshments,
Copy Diva (www.copydiva.com) provides the audio-visual
equipment, NCAR (www.ncar.ucar.edu) provides the
facility, and ONEWARE (www.oneware.com) sponsors these
minutes.

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Upcoming Meetings (2nd Tuesday of every other month
September 12: The future of online mapping: MapQuest
VP will be the speaker.
November 14: Chris Locke (sp?) Cluetrain Manifesto
Revisited

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Announcements

Laurie Lamar announced the following:
* Edward Tufte will be offering a seminar July 21
which has sold out.
* HFES (www.rmhfes.org) has a meeting in August on
human factors of south Pole expeditions
* AIGA is having Summertoast on August 3.

Job announcements:
* New Media One needs a PHP expert; based in Erie;
also SQL Server 2000 administrator.
* Creation Chamber has several positions available:
www.creationchamber.com.
* Mapbuzz, a startup near Denver, is looking for an
interaction designer for their website. Contract
position for 2 months, maybe longer: Contact Charlie
Savage cfis@....
* TextureMedia is looking for Information Architects.
To find out more information, go to
http://www.texturemedia.com
* Architeketure is looking for Java Developers. For
more information contact
Allen.Ellison@...
* McKesson looking for an HF/UI design engineer. Keri
Nightingale keri.nightingale@...
* Whitney Broach, co-manager of the CICSIG (Consulting
and Independent Contracting Special Interest Group) of
the STC, invited everyone who is independent, to join.
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Introduction (Josh Zapin)

Josh turned the meeting over to Laurie Lamar, a
consulting information architect and interaction
designer. Her projects include search engines,
portals, complex web applications, e-commerce
websites, and content management systems. Laurie is
the chair of the Rocky Mountain CHI.
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Laurie Lamar

Visio, Microsoft's ubiquitous diagramming program,
enables artistically-challenged people to map complex
processes, systems, or interfaces so that they are
easy to understand. In the website, web application,
and software design world, this could mean things like
o Site maps
o Storyboards
o Interaction diagrams and flow maps
o Network topology diagrams
o Business Process diagrams

Visio comes with thousands of pre-supplied shapes that
we can drag and drop to create meaningful diagrams in
seconds.

But, with its open architecture, Visio can do a whole
lot more including more productive rapid-prototyping
and detailed interface diagramming.

Tonight, Laurie said, we will dig into Visio and
learned about how it can do even more for us, as we
spec the information architecture and user interface
design for websites and web apps.

She suggested that new learners start with the basics
and move to more complex features of Visio. She
covered the basics quickly. She mentioned that Axure
is another tool, but of course, it costs money. She
asked audience members to share their knowledge as
well, because she acknowledged that she's not a Visio
expert. Half the audience does user experience work as
their primary work.

Laurie demonstrated Visio professional:
1. Shapes and stencils (if just getting started in
user experience, use Jesse James Garrett's diagrams).
Find them and others at www.nickfinck.com (Visio
shapes available). Elvisioso is another place to find
shapes. Using shapes like these is good for mocking up
page designs. You can move stuff around without having
to redraw it. If you find a shape you like, right
click; add it to "My Shapes" and "My Favorites." Visio
is excellent for flowcharting and storyboarding, not
to use as actual web pages. Laurie recommends Visio as
a good means of communicating interaction design or
any kind of prototyping.
2. Problems with Visio:
a. She did mention trouble with printing and
recommended using a standalone Acrobat to create a PDF
and then print.
b. Another drawback is that the page set up only works
on the tab you are on.
c. Macros can be turned off through
Tools/Options/Security/Macro Security/Button. Macros
are usually embedded in the document. You can save
them as text. They have the ability to do damage to an
open document but probably also can affect other
files.
d. Reviewers may not have updated versions of Visio.
e. Sometimes cannot get connectors to work the way you
want them to. An audience member demonstrated Viewing
connector points (View/Connection Points) and then
creating a connection point to glue your arrow to.
3. Laurie demonstrated how to embed files in Visio
(based on the work of Nathan Curtis at www.boxes and
arrows.com). Create a separate diagram to be embedded
in other Visio files. Put your created diagram in a
separate Visio document file, and then Insert/Object
and link to it. Then you can change the original Visio
file and have the changes cascade into all the
diagrams as Visio updates the links. You could also
create a page with a background with an object in a
fixed place. Or you can open the document stencil (Alt
V D), go to Masters, go to document stencil, and
create an object. You can edit that object and update
every instance of it.
4. You can also embed a part of a file (a cropped
diagram). Insert/Object/Create from file/Link to it.
Then crop what you want; select pointer tool and drag
it where you want.
5. Layers 101 (handout to be posted): Suppose you are
specing an interaction. Put all annotations in a
separate layer. Then through the view menu, you can
turn those layers on and off, depending upon who is
looking at it; they will still print.
6. Layers 102 (handout to be posted): Bill Scott made
a control panel that will automatically show or hide
layers when you click on them. This is good for
showing a rich Internet interaction. Laurie said to go
to www.boxes and arrows.com to look for an article on
this (she warned that it is not explained well; she
had to reduce the article to steps). Make a chart of
every interface element, and give them all a name
(like yellow highlight on hover). Then you'll know
what step they're in. Then you'll know what layer they
should appear on and map out what the layers are.
(Audience suggested doing this in PowerPoint(r) as a
build.)
(Note: Laurie's documents will be posted online at a
later date)

The second speaker, Jason T. Williams, demonstrated
Intuitect(tm), a Visio add-on to be released in
September 2006. Intuitect(tm) offers seamless
construction of navigation maps (sitemaps),
wireframes, flowmaps, and high-fidelity prototypes.
Intuitect eliminates manual, repetitive "boxes and
arrows" tasks, allowing information architects, user
experience designers, interaction designers, and other
website design professionals to focus on creativity.
o Use the Quick-Site Architect to quickly transform
"white board" concepts into high-level navigation
(sitemap) diagrams Updates in navigation view cascade
through wireframes
o Manage and export functional specifications to a
variety of audience-appropriate formats including
HTML, XML, Excel, or High-fidelity protototype
o Save and re-use wireframes in the Wireframe Library.
o Export Intuitect projects to HTML, XML or Excel
spreadsheet for validation, content inventories and
cross-functional collaboration with your team.

Jason began by showing us the pre-release version of
his software. Intuitect has created a visual
vocabulary to manage data relations for interactions.
He showed how to define a top-down navigational
hierarchy; all elements get automatically indexed.
This makes it easy to quickly define a site map and
expose custom properties; the "shape sheet" associated
with each object provides insight into the massive
database nature of Visio. Every object has properties
and events associated with it that you can now see and
edit when you run his software in developer mode.

He showed an advanced layers technique. Highlight a
node and move it, based on layers. All the layers are
managed within the application. Visio is vector-based;
this software is pixel-based. Masters are replicable
objects that can be used over and over to create a
wireframe of a website, and there is a wireframe
editor in the software. You can see an inventory of
the wireframes to which you can save wireframes.
There will be a library of wireframes in Intuitect.
The first version of Intuitect will be released for
Information Architects (IAs); the next version will be
more process-flow oriented. Each document can be saved
as a template.

This software will support agile development. You will
be able to export an Intuitect project file as a
hi-fidelity, navigable prototype. He thinks prototypes
are a very compelling reflection of client
requirements. This becomes your living specification.
Users will be able to export project data to Excel,
HTML, Visio, or XML. Users can also create a project
outline to hand off to team members.

Temporary pricing structure is in the $499 range.
There may be free viewers provided with the software
(no modifications possible) so that team members
without the software can view it.

He recommended an after-market resource: Visio
Developers Survival Pack by Graham Wideman. There are
also Google Groups; type in "Visio" and locate groups
to join.

The IA Institute (http://iainstitute.org/) is probably
the single best resource for IA related information
because it provides links to other resources.

(Links to Jason's documents are at:
http://www.intuitect.com/products/documents

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Links and resources

Microsoft's Visio website
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX010857981033.aspx

Intuitect
www.intuitect.com

Rocky Mountain CHI
www.indra.com/~rm-chi

Laurie Lamar
laurie@...

elvisioso.thechickentest.com

www.nickfinck.com

www.rmhfes.org


www.boxesandarrow.com

http://iainstitute.org/

ACM SIGCHI (The Special Interest Group for Computer
Human Interaction) has a free mailing list for anyone
interest in usability, interaction design, user
interface design, information architecture, and so on.
E-mail Laurie Lamar, laurie@....