Designers are communicators whether advocating for the user or demonstrating intent to stakeholders, effective communication is a core skill.

Web specifications

When not embedded in the development team or working with remote sites I’ve found the devil is in the details. Being explicit in these scenarios ensures quality, however, the amount of information must be tempered with clarity. Enough high level information to communicate intent without containing too much superfluous content from UCD processes. Mid level functional directives that allow for leeway in implementation constraints. Finally low-level details that act as a reference as an when needed.

Hardware control flow diagram

This is a specific flavour of the traditional workflow diagram which I use for devices. It’s a combination of the user’s workflow, the hardware functionality they interact with and system responses.

Storyboards

As a visual thinker I often lead in to my documentation with a storyboard capturing the context of use and personas for a design. This image is was created for an application that would enable end users to create software within the vee model

Knowledge Organisation

Archiving assets for the purposes of sharing and reuse is an important aspect of user interface design. The challenge is doing so in a way that makes the visual nature of the content easily searchable and browsable. When I couldn’t find a suitable tool that met my needs I designed my own. I took the popular wordpress theme and modified it in to a pattern library.  Download

Resources

Standing on the shoulders of giants, here are some stencils based on the work of others (apart from sketching, I did that one myself)

Wireframe Sketch	Storyboard characters	Interactive Sketch notation