Effective GUI Design with Lucid Spec (
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Review: Users often speak one language, while developers speak another. Lucid Spec brings both parties together to create GUIs that are more effective.
Lucid Spec is a communication tool. It helps users, developers, managers, administrators, and support personnel to get together and discuss what they expect from a Graphical User Interface (GUI).
If you're reading this and thinking to yourself that nothing is easier than creating a GUI, you're probably one of the people who will benefit most from this software. A GUI isn't just a collection of controls that you attach to event handlers to perform some task. Anyone who has watched vendors struggle with the GUI over the years (such as Microsoft, with its vast resources) understands that this is perhaps the most difficult part of an application because much of it defies the use of strict rules. The GUI is the "touchy feely" part of the application and is as much art as it is science.
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The Lucid Spec process involves three activities:
First, you design a screen, which probably isn't different from any other development activity with any other tool.
Second, you simulate the activity that the screen provides, which is where Lucid Spec begins to differ from the usual design process. Users and support personnel can actually try the screens out to see how they work. Changing a screen is easy because you don't have any real code behind it.
Third, you add descriptive information for each screen.
The descriptive information is important because it helps administrators and managers understand how the screen affects the application as a whole. Consequently, they can comment about potential problems before the developer writes hard-to-change code.
During all of this interaction, you create a specification for an application GUI, but more importantly, everyone involved with the application communicates. That's why I consider Lucid Spec more of a communication tool than a development tool.
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