Adaptive Path does Flash prototyping
Alexa Andrzejewski from Adaptive Path is an advocate of doing prototypes using Flash. She’s written a tutorial on Boxes and Arrows and also gave a workshop (here’s an in-depth PDF tutorial from that workshop).
Woot!
Alexa is a proponent of Flash prototyping for many of the same reasons as me. Her tutorials have a lot to offer – they provide a good intro to Flash and help explain some of the fundamental concepts that make Flash special.
Alexa’s method of Flash prototyping shares some common characteristics with my screenflow method of prototyping, but unfortunately she makes them overly complicated by making them interactive and she still relies on conventional specs.
Huh?!
For me, the prototype is the spec. If you feel the need to write specs then you should really demonstrate the functionality in the prototype. Very few people read specs and when they do everyone has a different interpretation. A huge reason for making prototypes is to eliminate the confusion and ambiguity of written specs!!
In addition, her prototypes are limited to a single, linear path like my screenflows (which is a very good thing), but oddly she makes them ’interactive’ with clickable buttons and links. Her prototypes require you to click on specific items to progress to the next screen. That makes her prototypes harder to use, harder to build and harder to edit, yet it offers no design advantages over screenflows.
A better way
I definitely recommend checking out her tutorials, but I strongly believe that my screenflow method is much easier, a better way to generate design ideas and a better way to share those ideas.
Let us know what you think...