
Who ever said that analysis & design ... must be all about software?
If a picture says 1,000 words - what might graphical documentation be able to tell us?
Documentation standards are many ... yet Flowcharts - as well as common nouns, verbs, and scenarios - are almost a universal language?
Music may indeed be one of the universal languages .. but we all have common real-world best-practices, activities, collaborations, & other well-understood "languages", as well!
Top-down? Bottom-up? Understanding the past, present, & future of our design activities can help us manage the expectaiton of those who want to participate in our designs, as well.
Be mindful that when it comes to drawing even the most basic flowcharts and / or other retroactively-standardized diagrams, there are those who tend to get a 'tad pedantic about how we choose to communicate our concepts!
The great thing about software is that we can create relationships between objects that may ... or may not ... exist in the real-world.
Once any high-level context & collaborative activity has been defined, we can begin to discover the type of information that we will need to make it happen.
Defining unique automation opportunities is one of the many advantages of taking the time to design & discuss what is to be done, before writing code.
Top-Down, Bottom-Up, High or Low Level Flows should be made to "Meet in the Middle?"
Getting to know the Unified Modeling Language's Use Case Diagram.
Inventing & teaching the "Gap Analysis" approach in the 1970's, I had no idea the technique would become so popular!
The focus of Design 1000 is to get you started confidently & competently creating the type of diagrams that you will need to use to start documenting ideas as quickly as possible. In Design 1000: Boxes & Bubbles you will learn how to use the most common diagramming flows, symbols, and techniques to allow you to share your ideas easily & professionally with others.
In Design 1000: Boxes & Bubbles you will also discover how common Flowcharting shapes are re-used by UML's Activity Diagrams (AD.) -Rather than being overly concerned with the differences, in Design 1000: Boxes & Bubbles you will learn how to use the common Flowcharting & AD flows & symbols that all professionals understand.
While documentation standards and illustration conventions have their particularities, from cave-paintings to modern Storyboards, and UML - what the designing-world needs now is a lot less intimidation... and a lot more collaboration! So as a bonus, in Design 1000 you will review both the UML Use Case basics as well as my own Boxes and Bubbles diagraming techniques. During this 1-hour educational opportunity you will complete several activities. Hands-on practice exercises working with well-known banking & commuting activities. Understandable actors and scenarios that will help you learn how to detect common re-use opportunities.
Indeed, when professionally documenting project requirements I have discovered that sharing a community-understood diagram will indeed save many from reading well over 1000 words. From money & banking to the workings of common inheritance, humanity shares far more best practices than most design students usually appreciate.
Sharing tenured advice on how to avoid undo criticism, to industrial-savvy advice on how to manage your own documentation creation & design life-cycles, Design 1000: Boxes & Bubbles is designed to encourage you to become more confident in sharing your ideas with others!