We like to start projects with prototyping in paper. It's the best tool we've found for getting non-technical folk and developers collaborating on how something might work.
Warning!
This presso makes extensive use of metaphor. Please treat with caution!
Let's imagine this is the developer community at a hack day. Buzz buzz buzz, work work work.
And here's where we'd like to end up at the end of a hack day. Tools, proofs-of-concept, mashups, a visualisation or two...
I told you there'd be metaphor...
And this is what a hack day is normally like. Lots of bees, making stufft.
Often out of pretty closed up flowers...
At #culturehackeast, all the flowers were open. Because they were there, in the room..
So, developers can move from flower to flower more easily.
And that was exciting. This is an excited bee. (NB: I have no basis for knowing this is an excited bee beyond it was the first image on a Flickr search for “excited bee” that was available under the right license, and in the correct aspect ratio.)
And here's where we ended up at the end of the hack day. Tools, proofs-of-concept, mashups, a visualisation or two...
Like this kind of thing: not produced at the hack day, but inspired by some of the playing with data we did in the stream I was in. thespace.lrb.co.uk
Some people played with this, and turned data from their boxoffice softare into maps that helped visualise their audiences: http://www.openheatmap.com/