UI mock-ups are slow

When you’re working with a Client on a new feature, designing the UI will come about quite early in the process. You’ll work together to create mock-ups,

Discussing fonts, fields, labels, buttons, and other widgets (“Should we have a drop-down list? Or will a text box do?”). You might even discuss colours, branding, or aesthetics. And most importantly on the Client’s list: organising the flow, so that day-to-day use is optimal.

If you are a UI or UX Designer, you’ll probably agonise over the finer details: where to place buttons, which font size to use, and whether fields should be place side-by-side, or vertically. You’ll consider margins and padding, and how to incorporate contemporary UI/UX design patterns.

And when the Client wants another field in the UI, everything that already exists needs to be reshuffled to accommodate. Sometimes, a complete re-design is in order.

That’s all too slow

When you’re doing domain discovery, the UI Design phase is one of the slowest (and possibly misguided) techniques to use.

So the answer is: don’t.

Direct the conversation away from the UI, back towards the business domain. Use Fresnel to capture the domain concepts into a model, and have it auto-generate the UI. Use the auto-generated UI to walk through various scenarios with your Client.

And when you’ve figured out how the model works, you’re in a better position to build a custom UI that streamlines business operations.