Reviewing and Approving Wireframe Versions of Forms¶

This developer blog article was originally published on MetaCommunication’s website in July, 2010 and discusses the review and approval of wireframe form mockups for Virtual Ticket.

The original article is no longer accessible on MetaCommunication’s website, but the text has been preserved below.

In my previous article, I wrote about how wireframes can be effectively used to conceptualize new forms for use in Workgroups 2010. The greatest benefits of this are that you can create a visual mock-up of a form, define the elements that will go into it, and obtain buy-in from active stakeholders in the system. For this article, I’ll expand on ways to streamline the buy-in process, and introduce some of the new features that have been rolled out with the recently released Workgroups 2010 R2 edition. New Workgroups 2010 R2 Functionality

Workgroups 2010 R2 introduces new support for reviewing and approving wireframe documents created by Balsamiq Mockups. This popular wireframing tool saves documents in a .bmml file format. With the ‘R2’ version of Approval Manager and Spark!, you can now define .bmml as a proofer file type and specify Spark! as the default proofer application. This new, built-in support allows you to review, annotate, mark-up, and approve/reject Balsamic Mockups using Approval Manager and Spark! just as you would with other file types like .png, .pdf, .jpg, etc. (For details, see Configuring Balsamiq Mockups support in Approval Manager.)

Streamlining the Buy-In Process

When I wrote about the buy-in process in my previous blog article, my focus was on giving stakeholders an opportunity to visualize and agree upon a wireframe mockup version of a form. With R2’s new built-in support for Balsamiq Mockups, you can use Approval Manager and Spark! to streamline this buy-in process, making something that was previously possible now dramatically more efficient.

For example, let’s say you’ve created a wireframe mockup of a form in Balsamiq Mockups. Instead of printing it out/distributing it, or asking all the stakeholders to install the Balsamiq Mockups software on their own machines, you can instead just set up a proof in Approval Manager. This allows you to assign the stakeholders to review the mockup, give them due dates for providing feedback, send them emails with a link back to the proof, let them see what comments/annotations other stakeholders have made, and let them approve/reject the mockup - all directly through Approval Manager and Spark! with nothing special to install.

Extending the Benefits

There are other added benefits to incorporating Approval Manager/Spark! into the wireframe mockup review and approval process as well. For example, what better way to get buy-in from the stakeholders of the system than by having them actually use the system to review and approve the wireframe mockups? Imagine how easy it would be to roll out the Approval Manager/Spark! modules to your clients when the stakeholders have already had first-hand experience with the system, and can help tout its capabilities.

What do you think? Have you begun using wireframe mockups to conceptualize your forms? Have you considered using Approval Manager and Spark! as a review/approval tool for those mockups? I’d love to hear your thoughts and what your experiences have been!