[thelist] process/architecture diagramming

Christopher Orth - HQ corth at casey.org
Thu Jul 27 11:30:34 CDT 2000


I gave up on trying to diagram websites long ago.  It simply does not work
after your website grows past about 20 pages.  Try drawing a diagram for a
website with several hundreds or thousands of pages, not to mention
dynamically generated pages.  Not realistic.  And after you work on sites
that large for a while, you simply do not need to diagram the smaller sites
anymore.  At least, not for your own use.

What I find works much better is to actually describe your architecture
where necessary in smaller snapshots of detail that look more like a finder
or explorer window, and then provide a text based, bullet listed explanation
of general topics and categories.  The snapshots will look just like they do
in your site management tool of choice, and will also look familiar to other
computer users who may have little to do with the maintenance of your site
but somehow still find themselves in a decision making position about it.
The text list overview is about all an upper executive or client can
reasonable digest and understand, and it is in a format they will really
identify with.  These also leave you a lot of room to be flexible with your
design as needs grow due to the inevitable project scope creep.

Here is my personal rule of thumb for diagramming web site architectures.
"If you cannot convey the functionality of your navigation and architecture
on one piece of flip chart paper with one marker, your design will fail in
the real world".  Sounds over simplified, but it really has proved true time
and again for me.  After all, don't forget that web navigation should be
transparent.

Thanks



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jason Fields [mailto:jason at v1c.net]
> Sent: Wednesday, July 26, 2000 6:28 PM
> To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
> Subject: [thelist] process/architecture diagramming
> 
> 
> Greetings...
> 
> I am in the midst of assembling a number of
> graphic look/feel resources to figure out
> how I want to present a process and architecture
> in regards to a project I am working on now...
> 
> I am curious what resource/s you recommend I
> look at for inspiration on this subject...
> 
> I have doe searches on all the good search engines
> and have come up with a feeble amount of visually
> pleasing diagrams...
> 
> I have evn visited the likes of MetaDesign, IconMediaLab,
> PlumbDesign, Circumstance, RazorFish, etc... and have
> had little or no luck with getting satisfactory visual
> stimulus...
> 
> Any ideas? Do any of you have things like this to forward
> on to me... preferably not classified/NDA protected?
> 
> Thanks in advance... I will post my findings and the final
> results once I have all the data captured...
> 
> Regards,
> Jason Fields.
> 
> 
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