Last night’s UX Meetup was about using Axure. Fred Beecher and Lori Baker brought examples to illustrate the capabilities of Axure as an interactive prototyping tool — exciting stuff! The notes are below.

We were welcomed by a student soon to be looking for a job in the field of IA, so we spent a little time discussing “What is IA”? Here are some notes from that discussion:

“What is IA?”

• Where things go and what they’re called
• IA’s use research to make recommendations
• IA’s also advocate for standard web conventions (there are only a few conventions – always have a home button, clickable logo, back button goes back)
• IA started with librarians
• Librarians will teach you the system to the library (like the Dewey Decimal System) – on the web, there is no one to help – thus our job is to design systems where people won’t need help
• People have goals, but the goal is never to use the site – it has to do with the use of the product (we need to get out of the way as much as possible)
• Business value of UX design: goal is to get people to give you money (it’s a competitive advantage)
• Outstanding question: Thermostats – are they usable?

Axure

• “Thou shalt not change production code” this is a tool for designers to play around and practice
• Axure is the designers sandbox
• Prototype is a communication tool to the developers
• DO NOT USE PROTOTYPE FOR PRODUCTION CODE
• Design in code slows everybody down, because everyone wants to be a designer
• Easier to be quicker on your feet, more flexible to have a flexible design
• Changing flash is a big deal, changing a prototype is not a big deal
• Axure creates “Wireframes that move”
• We are not developers, Axure makes me do things I couldn’t do and without making code
• Use Axure for a POC (proof of concept) test – we learned that this isn’t the way everyone wants to search
• Really important to do the test plan first before building the prototype
• Axure prototypes help build confidence that you’ll release with usable functionality
• Axure style editor allows you to change font, background color, headers across the prototype, like CSS to a website
• When adding functionality for a current system, good to use a high visual and high interactive fidelity prototype so that users can still visualize the current system with the new functionality
• Good for user testing, getting feedback
• Also great for communicating with developers
• “Designed by developers for designers”
• Wireframing, prototyping and documentation in one tool
• $589 for a license, includes 1 year of free updates ($150 after that to keep up with updates – 2 releases per year)
• Keep things black and white to prevent people from using the prototype as the final product
• Testing before the design and after the design to make sure things are interpreted correctly when you handed off the design
• Slap and map – slapping up a design and a sitemap to use to display functionality — adds higher visual fidelity
• In-line frame would import html file that has the swf embed file – for clicking around, you’d need to code the swf file to have that functionality
• Don’t add a ton of flash