MORE: Web Info Architecture; VISIO-the joke

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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.

Outliners.com Message ID: 226

Posted by richard
1999-08-26 02:51:29

I began using More in 95 while working for TCI, developing the @Home Network before they spun it off into its own entity. We were an all-Mac design studio with 10 media designers and one info architect (me). Everyone loved it because you could toggle from outline mode to flow-chart mode, and edit from either. Though it took a lot of work to format the charts into efficient documents that didn’t require tile-printing onto 25 sheets of paper, it was very powerful in helping to develop a site architecture.

By 97, when I architected the original prototypes for etoys.com, I was stuck in a PC-dominant work environment—and file-sharing was the rule of the land. So I was forced to stop using More—because the Biz development folks and coders were all on PC’s… Sad… I searched in vein for a PC equivalent to MORE—for web flowcharts and information architecture. All I ever heard people say was “Visio”... I didn’t have Visio on Mac, so I used Quark Xpress since I could control the layout… No intelligence for flowcharting, but great for visual control.

In 98 thru March 99 I was Director of User Interface Design for Bankof America.com—my largest and most complex project ever. All PC’s (Macs were special order, requiring approval from 3 levels up, and it literally took 5 months to get one—too late). I asked what people used—the said Visio. So I took a course in it to get up to speed fast. What a joke! 20 minutes into the presentation I asked the instructor: “Let me understand this: is this a glorified set of graphical templates and shapes with which to draw a flowchart—or is there anykind of outline intelligence built into this app?” Answer: “essentially a drawing program with library of shapes and some limited linkage capability”. I couldn’t believe what a waste of time—in that classroom, for the developers of that app, and any poor sap who was told Visio is a great flowchart program. A colleague at BankAmerica who was steeped in programming (I am not a programmer), insisted on using WORD’s outline features. I asked him to show me them—and it was so cumbersome and non-intuitive that I abandoned that and went back to using a whiteboard…

When I asked top-flight web design firms in San Francisco what they used for web flowcharting, some mentioned Visio—while most used no form of intelligent flowcharting at all.

Studio Archetype (UPS.com, Realtor.com, ton of high-end sites):
uses Illustrator or Quark

USWeb/CKS: Illustrator; with some “living docs” created in Filemaker Pro

MetaDesign: Illustrator

and so on… NO ONE had heard of More—and no one had a smart tool for working out the information architecture—but rather used a graphic design tool to work through the evolution of a flowchart.

I stumbled upon this website via Jacob Neilson’s “alertbox” columns on useit.com ... It’s thrilling to see MORE being validated—people thought I was crazy. Thanks to Brad and others for ressurecting this tool. I am only slightly disappointed that the version I already had (3.1) was the last released.

If anyone here uses More for Web information architecture, and has developed a great template (in flowchart mode) which compensates for some of the default layout problems, please email me with file-attach to:
mailto:

Thank you very much!

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