psheridan's blog

There are a lot of people out there trying to compete to be your front-end Ajax/ web 2.0 framework of choice.

In the midst of technical framework comparisons, ask yourself, "Where is the RIA Industry Going?"

We feel the future of RIA's is the 'Next Plateau' where frameworks are absorbed into IDE's and online content management tools.

Web 2.0 UI toolsets are falling into a few major categories:
1. Visual Effect frameworks - transition effects for content display
2. Application Frameworks - layout management and ever growing widget libraries

One of the things I like best about the current state of UI libraries like Ext JS or Flex is that they allow for prototype driven analysis.

As user story definition replaces traditional use cases, competent user interface designers can BEGIN analysis discussions with functional prototypes.

In traditional paper wireframing approaches, user's tend to hesitate until they can see something concrete.

Having users interact during analysis allows for a fuller undestanding of how the system workd that paper just can't provide.

Rich internet application architecture changes the very foundation driving user experience design to date. The gist of it is that user interface designers are no longer the aggregators and owners of the user interface per se, rather they are architects of a Framework for end user to define their own unique user interface.

I believe this fundamental shift scares most user interface designers out of their pants. Why? Well, the perception that the skillset is now obselete for one!