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If you’re student, faculty, or staff at an educational institution and you want a free license of Adobe’s new Flex software, head over to flexregistration.com.
Flex was built on the Eclipse environment, so all you Eclipse fans should check it out. I haven’t used it yet, but here’s Adobe’s definition blurb: Read the rest of this entry »
Adobe says: Designer != Developer
When I was doing mainly Flash projects, even starting 3 or 4 years ago, I noticed there was becoming a gap in the people that did mainly design, and the people that did mainly development - both using Flash. Flash was created for quick and easy animation that ended up having a very powerful coding system behind it, so people found themselves in one of the two camps. It seems as though Adobe (actually Macromedia, which is now Adobe Labs) caught on to this and is now coming out with two products that address this exact point.
Adobe’s latest Labs project, codenamed Thermo, is a designer’s environment that will make creating dynamic, “rich”, and streaming content easy to implement into a project. I’d suggest taking a look at the videos from the MAX Day keynote in October 2007. Besides not having to look to the more developly minded to bring in the latest XML feed from your site, one of the amazing things about Thermo is the files it produces are saved as Flex applications, which is simply source code and not a proprietary formatted file like FLA.
The other project that has recently been released out of beta is Flex. Flex is for the developers coming to rich Internet applications (RIA) as programmers and are more familiar with the environments surrounding source code and structure rather than the tools and pallets associated with front-end media (like Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, etc). Flex Builder is a program built on Eclipse (an environment available for coding Java, Processing, C, etc) for purchase, or if you are also able to download the SDK directly for Eclipse - the entire framework is Open Source.
To bring your new projects to [any] desktop, Adobe has just released AIR. AIR coaxes developers of rich Internet applications to spread to the desktop. Created in AJAX (including HTML), Flash, or Flex, you can package and distribute a single file of your new desktop application for Linux, Mac, or Windows. The ideas and metaphors surrounding browser and desktop applications truly interests me, AIR takes it right to the heart. Check out the comparison chart as to why you’d want to use one over the other.
Between the two of these new ways to create applications for browser, mobile, and desktop, we’ll begin to see even more amazingly connected integrations taking place. A perfect continuing effort for Web 2.0. I doubt Flash will be phased out - I think they’re even trying to get it back to its routes in a linear timeline/keyframe animation tool, but when it comes to RIA, these sure look like the way things are going.
So what does this mean for this site? I’m not entirely sure. I do know it will be even more crucial for testing with potential users. When doing user testing it is vital that what is on screen remains clear to what is a prototype, and what is a current working design. When products make the production process more streamlined and easier to implement, the tendency is to show as much of a completed version of possible, but this is rarely beneficial when testing. Usability testers (especially when they’re clients) are quick to jump to comments about color, exact placement, size, etc. if the design looks too good. With these new products it becomes even more important to find the sweet spot so the person being tested instantly knows this is a mock-up sketch meant to simulate function and not design so you can receive the best and most important feedback about your project.
They are all still in testing or first-round stages, and will take a while to become widely used, but what I do know is I believe these tools will be giving us an even broader toolset for how to build prototypes and push them forward to becoming full-blown applications!
Web 1.0 User Testing
I’m searching for videos and more information about user testing re: videos and came upon this one. So dramatic! But does have some good methods and ideas.
Forum up and ready
I’ve set up a forum to help with organizing questions, topics, suggested practices, ideas, links, etc.
I’d like to make sure we’re discussing core understandings of Flash or prototyping and not just how to get one part of one code to work. It’s for the best to help breakdown and understand concepts and not just getting one bit of code working, and for everyone else as this site grows.
Select “Register” from the top menu to set up a user account:
http://FlashPrototyping.com/forum/index.php
Here comes mock-up.org!
This website is originally being created as a continual project for my Designing for Constraints class with Amit Pitaru at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.
This is a resource site created to help with creating quick and usable prototypes so you can put your idea in front of your users and get feedback faster.
The Tutorials will help you start out using Flash from the very beginning while looking to the Reference Guide for explanations of coding in Flash. The Reference Guide is an abridged version of the complete coding language which has been designed to introduce the most commonly used options. A list of easy to use Components for user interfaces have been pulled together for fast implementation to your project. When you have a specific project at hand, there are Kits available that are categorized with samples to get you on your way.
In addition to using Flash as a primary software development application for mock prototypes, this site discusses the use of other third party software as well as hardware created for single switch, keyboard emulation, and physical computing.
For more information on areas such as usability design, advanced reference guides, and navigation techniques; check out the Links and Resources.
The Wiki and Forum are implemented to help create a community atmosphere for questions and insights. Check the Blog to keep up to date with the website and its creator.
The information here is by no means an exhaustive resource site, but instead geared towards helping non-programmers combine user testing, prototyping, and feedback with the functionality of Flash and other tools to test their concepts and projects in front of real users quickly and effectively.
