Word Frames

It occurred to me many months ago when I attended a Tufte seminar that wire frames shouldn't have wires.

Those lines always end up making the whole layout look very boxey. Yea, I know, its not meant to show design. Its not going to end up being boxes just because that's how the wire frame looks. But more and more, wire frames are making there way out to be viewed by people without that inherent knowledge. So as a communications tool for that phase of Web site design, it may be failing.

Next time I'm hankering for a wire frame I'm going to try something new... a word frame. If you look at what is trying to be communicated by a wire frame, there is no need for the hard-and-fast boundaries that lines create. You can communicate importance, size, and relative positioning with text styled at different sizes and weights. And skip the lines.

I'll give it a try some time and let you know how it works.

SL Training?

Remote training. Online training. Webex Training. Sounds like a good time to multi-task doesn't it.

Ever multi-tasked while sitting around in Second Life?

Perhaps that is the killer business application. Training. The tools are all there or you can probably build the few you may need to add. Chairs, tables, tools for interfacing with each other. Would you pay more attention looking at an Avatar then a power point slide on WebEx?

I would.

Then again, I might also get distracted by the fact that half of the audience was dressed like extras from the Matrix or just the fact that I could fly around the room.

Again, might work for existing users of SL, but newbies? Maybe not.

Second Life -- the Audience

I've started wandering around Second Life to see what applications to work it might have.

Early Notes:

1) Requiring users to go through "demo island" seems like a barrier to casual use. Perhaps that's the intent or perhaps they got too many complaints that there was no orientation. I could see that. Heck, I still can't figure out how to open a box someone gave me yesterday.

So if you were going to do meet ups in Second Life for people who don't normally interact in this kind of world at least, I'm not sure how that would work.

So the goals in Second Life need to be tailored around brining the message to residents not bringing the interesting tools and environments possible in SL to outside audiences.

That seems to match the marketing applications I've read about for Second Life, but not other comments I've heard about using Second Life for corporate team building.

About Me

I love long titles. I almost just named the blog Thought Bubbles, but really, why not.

I've been working in and around the internet for a while now. I got started when I was one of two people under the age of 30 in a small non-profit that wanted a Web site. Since I actually knew what they were talking about, I got the job.

I fondly remember coding in Notepad. I still code "by hand" more often then not but upgraded to Homesite long ago. But I still take geeky pride in being able to code tags from memory despite the tools I use now that make it so I don't really need to know this stuff. (My memory is notorious.)

I've typically worked at medium to small trade associations and other non-profits as diverse as C-SPAN, the Council of Better Business Bureaus and several more typical trade associations. I currently work for the Biotechnology Industry Organization.

But this blog will not really be about where I work, but what I'm thinking and doing right now. Not because I think that I have that much wisdom to bestow, but I find that I'm a long thinker. I tend to take a while gestating on ideas and polishing them before I get a chance to do anything with them. So Thought Bubbles Over a Cube Wall will be the place where I write down my thoughts and make note of research and investigating I'm doing now.