After reviewing over 1,000 deliverables produced by many, many UX and design teams over the past two years, one thing is brutally clear: no teams - in fact, no two individuals - seem to produce deliverables like wireframes the same way. And that’s a shame.

Sure, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. However, too many designers seem guided by the flawed notion that not just design but documentation too must be ever unique. This leaves readers flustered, confused, and often dismissive. Even worse, not adopting a uniform approach may diminish a team’s influence and credibility, and maybe even our role in the industry.

This session will share the practical techniques that EightShapes has learned from, taught and embedded in teams large and small over three years. You’ll be introduced to advanced documentation techniques through EightShapes Unify to deliver actionable user experience design documentation, efficiently create and modularly reuse page and component wireframes, and unify the output that your team members produce to design and document interactive applications. Just as important, you’ll learn of challenges and pitfalls so you can avoid failures we’ve experienced along the way.

Nathan Curtis is a founder and principal at EightShapes, LLC, a user experience consulting firm based in Washington, DC, and has practiced information architecture, interaction design, usability research, and front-end development since 1996. Nathan upcoming book - Modular Web Design:Creating Reusable Components for UX Design & Documentation - is due from Peachpit Press in summer 2009.

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