90% Of Everything: Links

In response to Andy Rutledge's recent article on wireframing, James Russell responds:

The initial abstract doesn't seem too bad, here's the essence of it:

Wireframes can be useful, valuable artifacts for informing the designer’s process. But they often fail miserably as a first-step deliverable for clients.

Without context, for certain, wireframes alone, for many clients can get you off on the wrong foot.

The rest of the article however is really just client relationship management 101 and seems to presume, as a basis, that project delivery will be utilising a fully locked down old school waterfall methodology.

If full unmodified waterfall is the basis for a web delivery project, I would argue you already have bigger problems than whether wireframes are a good first-step client deliverable.

Visual Website Optimizer, Wingify’s new product, has such a UI for creating A/B tests so simple it will crush the life out of all other solutions for non-technical users:

1. VWO opens your site in a browser.
2. You click the element on the page you want to A/B test.
3. You click “Add variation.”
4. You add a variation by typing into a WYSIWYG editor.  (TinyMCE, if I don’t miss my guess.  Score one for OSS.)
5. Copy/paste the Javascript we give you into your page.  You don’t have to identify sections, massage your HTML, or create alternate URLs.  We do that %(#$ for you.

While there remain certain specific contexts where it is advisable to craft and present wireframe layouts for client evaluation and approval, this practice is often a really bad move and one made at the wrong moment in the design process, and for the wrong reasons. Wireframes can be useful, valuable artifacts for informing the designer’s process. But they often fail miserably as a first-step deliverable for clients.

Packstation is a service run by DHL Parcel Germany, a business unit of Deutsche Post's Mail division, in Germany. It provides automated booths for self-service collection of parcels and oversize letters as well as self-service dispatch of parcels 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

via en.wikipedia.org

You gotta love the macho electronic music. If you liked that, here are a couple of photos from the Daily Mail of Amazon's Milton Keynes fulfilment centre...