The backyard blitz work on our front garden is going well, despite the constant drizzle and ambitious nature of the project. At the moment all the grass has been cleared and the garden beds are being built. Tomorrow morning we are heading to Flemington markets to buy some more roses, hedges and hopefully some edging sandstone to complete the project.
Then I have to re-lay all the turf that I dug up around the back. With another day or rain promised (in fact a whole week) it should continue to be a very messy process.
In my current role I am really noticing the huge rewards delivered through extensive prototyping and usability testing. The ability to better capture and illustrate user feedback (internally and externally) as well as accelerate application development cannot be undervalued. As they say a picture tells a thousand words, but in this case a functional picture replaces a thousand words in a requirements document with ease. Requirements documents still have their place, but not as a basis for user comment or even developer guidelines. So what programs do I recommend?
Balsamic screenshot
The first is Balsamiq, a great little tool that you can use to replace those back of the envelope sketches at 1am in the morning. It is very rough and intended for initial prototypes only, but I find this is well suited for situations where your stakeholders can’t see the concepts for the details. I like it because it lets me see if the ideas that click beautifully in my head actually translate to something workable in real life. Above all though it is quick. Don’t expect to do full working prototypes, but you can expect to have a full Web 2.0 application roughly laid out within an hour. Once you have the concept nailed down however then it is time to move on to some other tools. Think of it as throwing a couple of A4 sheets on a table and spending an hour scribbling, without the rubber shavings and sloping misshapen tables. It is great to be able to pin it to your wall to make sure you keep focusing on the key deliverables of the application, rather than getting carried away with the details of day to day execution.
Axure Screenshot
My favourite tool however is Axure. This tool is great because like Balsamiq it lets you build a working website really quickly, but it then lets you “colour between the lines” and flesh out an almost fully functional prototype. Out of the box Axure is a great program, with all the basic web elements you would expect. They are all easy to edit, move, layout and link. Generating HTML prototypes is also extremely easy, a one click step once you have specified an output directory.
To really unlock the power of Axure however you need to use some community resources. This top 10 Axure resources link is a great starting point. A Clean Design’s templates (number 3 in the top 10) is my personal favourite, it has almost every Web 2.0 element you can think of. The ones that are missing (i.e. Accordian, flyout menus) are covered by the official Axure design library (which is also a good example of HTML generated in Axure).
In conclusion these two tools are the staples of my usability and prototyping work. They are so powerful that one starts wondering, how long until I no longer need to send these off to a coder to develop and deploy my solution?
The latest buzz around Telstra is that they have engaged a recruiter to start the hunt for a new CEO. This rumour comes hot on the heels of his two amigos, Greg Winn and Phil Burgess, returning to the US. Sol has now been CEO of Telstra since way back in 2005 and quickly became known for his ‘no compromise’ stance towards Government regulation.
The evidence that this policy has backfired on Telstra is now building, with Optus now looking to be in the box seat to grab the National Broadband Network contract by the end of March. It is quite likely that the contract will be awarded in conjunction with at least one other party, ironically most likely a group of ex-Telstra employees. That has to hurt a bit, especially for people within Telstra who were opposed to Sol’s strategies.
So what happens next? Well if, as expected, Telstra misses out on the NBN contract then I think Sol would be more than willing to use that as an exit strategy. Would this signal a change in direction for Telstra, or would the new CEO have even more incentive to fight the process every step of the way? I would like to think that they could take a more positive approach and focus on delivering the best wireless solution possible and keep competition in the market strong. I guess this would entirely depend on the Government and how they see the NBN tender winners leveraging Telstra’s existing infrastructure. I hope they have the lawyers and strategy in place, otherwise this could get very messy.
