16 March · Visual Vocabulary · 1 Visual Vocabulary: An Introduction Jesse James Garrett

16 March · Visual Vocabulary · 2 Rule Number One Maximize portability. Ensure that the widest possible audience can… distribute open read print use …the documents you produce.

16 March · Visual Vocabulary · 3 Consequences of Rule Number One Deliver electronically, not hard copy Unless a document needs to be edited by others, deliver in PDF Favor tool-independent formats over proprietary ones Design for standard page sizes (8.5x11 preferred) Use color as a redundant information channel only

16 March · Visual Vocabulary · 4 Architecture Diagrams a.k.a. site maps, user flows Provide the big picture of the user experience Provide context for design decisions Serve as the foundation for the rest of the project The “trophy deliverable”

16 March · Visual Vocabulary · 5 What they’re bad at Specifying ‘behind-the-scenes’ system activities Specifying page-level interface behaviors Specifying every link on every page Serving as stand-alone documentation

16 March · Visual Vocabulary · 6 The Visual Vocabulary Started in 1998; first made public in 2000 Set of standard shapes to express common concepts Designed to be: Tool-agnostic Whiteboard-compatible Self-contained

16 March · Visual Vocabulary · 7 Tool-agnostic See Rule Number One Enforced simplicity of design “If it will work in PowerPoint, it will work anywhere”

16 March · Visual Vocabulary · 8 Why “vocabulary”? Not just a collection of symbols, but a system Has its own internal logic (“grammar”) Efficient substitute for text descriptions

16 March · Visual Vocabulary · 9 An example From the search query page, the user can submit a query. The system checks to see if the query is valid; if it is not, the system returns the user to the query page. If the query is valid, the user is presented with a sequence of search results pages. From these pages, the user can navigate to one or more content pages matching the query, or return to the query page to refine the query. search query invalid valid search results content pages submit refine query

16 March · Visual Vocabulary · 10 Conditional elements Represent basic concepts used in conditional logic Can be combined to create arbitrarily complex navigational structures

16 March · Visual Vocabulary · 11 Creating modular structures These elements allow you to: Break up your diagram across multiple pages Represent unusually complex (tangled) architectures Create reusable “objects” order confirmed continue to: home page homelogin member home

16 March · Visual Vocabulary · 12 Freely available shape libraries OmniGraffle 2.0 for Mac OS X ships with the library pre-installed Libraries on my site for: Visio 4 and higher Illustrator 8 and higher FreeHand 9 and higher PowerPoint 97 and higher Adobe InDesign iGrafx Flowcharter 2000 Plus EPS files for import into most other tools

16 March · Visual Vocabulary · 13 More info Tutorial Shape libraries Reference materials Examples Detailed example