Using DENIM

March 23, 2002

This is an animated GIF of the zooming feature of the DENIM interface.
The actual zooming is very smooth on a Dell 8100 laptop in Win2K, but
somewhat jerky on a new iMac running OSX. The file is the tutorial example.

You can see how the level of detail is managed. The large slider along the left
has built-in click stops, but you can also click on the thumbnails to jump to
a magnification level.

On a desktop environment, you would use a WACOM tablet to sketch and
activate the gesture-based controls.

Jessica Shea, a requirements analyst, is pictured here sketching an intranet
application interface on a SmartBoard with DENIM projected.

Jessica can either draw with the stylus, or with her finger. She can
easily tap or drag the zoom slider. UI widgets are hyperlinked
simply by dragging lines in the Storyboard view.

DENIM has a "run" mode which renders all the storyboards in a
working pseudo-browser with clickable links. The same storyboards
can be exported as a series of imagemapped GIF images in a series
of HTML files.

We were really impressed with how fast we were able to create a
navigable sketch prototype without messing with Visio stencils.

This mode of working is somewhat tricky to set up requiring an LCD
projector, a rather expensive SmartBoard, and a tangle of cables.
I think once we get the procedure documented, this will be a
valuable tool in collaborative UI design, and site mapping sessions.

The DENIM User Guide provides a more detailed overview of the
application's features and user interface.

The videos on the DENIM home page are worth a look if you are
on a fast connection.