As a this is what I meant chat I had with Matt in regarding Software Development, I came up with some key idea’s.
One is that in prototyping/designing the interactions you are creating the surface in which a user interacts with the system. The how things are done below this do not really concern the user, performance constraints aside.
What I was thinking of is a system where you build entities that are user level concepts, things that hold business meaning values. So in a customer management system, you may enter a partial customer say minus fax number. So this needs to be saved so you can do something else. Yet you want to later resume entering the customer once you have their fax number. So for mass faxing (an evil act in its self) this new customer is not fit for purpose. So things become about how do you manage the process of making things fit for purpose.
So with that in mind this is what I was thinking of for software development. As you build the interactions there are steps still to be done, before the system may be complete, but maybe the system is still complete enough to explore the interaction. With task/decisions still left to be explored. I think of it as brain mapping an applications where parts are still left to be considered.
So if you have an application, where you have been displaying entity values and you then introduce role based security, you have to make decisions about how the roles can interact with business values. Then when a new role is created, the past decision needs to be mapped to tasks yet to be done.
Sort of a system where the process of creating new solutions understand the type of interactions it may have, and these interactions/decisions are recorded, amendable, explorable and reviewable. Notes and thoughts recorded as the domain is explored, giving you interactive creation.
This seems much more desirable than the flat specification document I have to read, and I have not yet because I know it’s not going to be what I have in my head. When discussing this section A will be used to argue that section B is correct yet forgotten (by all) will be section C, and its overall interaction.
The non-linear nature of interaction does not fit well into written form.
It’s not fit for purpose.