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iRise partner OneSpring has updated their popular “SimDK for iPhones” and graciously allowed us to post the new iDoc as “iRise for iPhone” for download on the iRise site. This iDoc gives iPhone developers the ability to visualize iPhone applications early in the process. Functions simulated include the ability to quickly prototype the look, feel and behavior of iPhone applications, including screen transitions, typing and sliding.
To download the free iRise for iPhones iDoc, click here.
iRise for iPhones is a complete toolkit for the design of custom iPhone applications. It was built using visual elements and artifacts directly from Apple’s SDK, to which only approved Apple developers have access, thus allowing business analysts and interface designers who do not have access to Apple’s SDK to model app behavior early in the process.
iRise for iPhones offers a template guide that matches the form factor of the iPhone to help ensure designs can be accurately reproduced with the Apple SDK. iRise for iPhones includes:
o iPhone iDoc visualization template with guides;
o Menu icons w/ buttons;
o Custom button template;
o Slider and button action behaviors; and,
o Multi-touch actions.
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We just posted a new iRise iDoc for free download that contains 1,000 16×16 icons for use in iRise visualizations. Since all of the icons are maintained in a datasheet, you can easily add your own. Searching and tagging make it easy and fast to find the icon you need. Import the iDoc to your Definition Center so everyone can use it. To get the free iDoc, click here.
NOTE: This iDoc contains icons and other images created by Mark James and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/. Your use of any of these icons and images is governed by that agreement. Additional information is available here: http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/. This iDoc and any of its content is provided AS-IS. By downloading this iDoc you acknowledge and agree that neither iRise nor any iRise licensor makes any warranty whatsoever regarding this iDoc or any of its content, and iRise and its licensors hereby disclaim all implied warranties, including without limitation any implied warranty of non-infringement.
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I hear from a lot of customers that find visualization a bit overwhelming at first. It’s a new way to explore business needs and hear directly from your stakeholders and customers before costly development begins. iRise is the market leader in visualization. Over 200 customers have improved their processes by visualizing their needs.
So to help you begin your first journey, I’ve decided to put together a getting starting guide for you.
- (5min) Browse the iRise Product Overview Video. Take a quick look at visualization and how it can benefit you. There are plenty of customer testimonials and product videos in the Media center if you are interested.
- (15min) Take the iRise Product Tour. Explore how iRise can help you based on your role in the company.
- (15min) Download iRise. iRise offers a free fully-functioning 30 day trial of the iRise Professional Edition product. Individual business analysts, interface designers and project managers can leverage powerful visualization techniques already in use by hundreds of corporate customers to get business critical software projects to market faster, with less cost and risk.
- (4+hrs) Take the iRise eLearning courses. iRise helps get you started with 2 free eLearning courses. iRise Overview, a self-paced, eLearning course designed to introduce iRise to anyone responsible for selecting and/or using iRise on a project and iRise Explained, a self-paced, eLearning course that covers an introduction to the basic capabilities of iRise and how to use such capabilities to elicit and validate requirements and designs for page flow, page layout, navigation, data, business logic, high fidelity user interfaces and dynamic user interaction using actions, events, alternate views, styles, templates and masters..
- (5min) Download the Common Samples iDoc. This iDoc can be opened in your trial version of iRise and gives you a number of useful visualization examples. Copy and paste what you need into your new project. Want to see how high definition, data driven visualizations are done? Use the Common Samples iDoc as a guide. Speed up learning and get your next project kicked off fast.
That’s it, you’ve developed a high level understanding of iRise and visualization. Now you have 29 days left on your trial, get visualizing!
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Occasionally, we will get the question from companies “what can I do with iRise and how do I do it?”.
Jeesh, where should we begin…you know what, just check out one of our new online courses. These new self-paced eLearning modules can be accessed by anyone with an Internet browser and cover both basic and advanced simulation concepts and techniques using iRise.
There are currently two free courses for you to take:
iRise Overview
iRise Overview is a self-paced, eLearning course designed to introduce iRise to anyone responsible for selecting and/or using iRise on a project. This course provides a broad overview of the various components of iRise and how iRise can be used to elicit and validate complete and accurate requirements and designs. After completing the course, participants will have a general understanding of iRise and capabilities to achieve such goals.
iRise Explained
iRise Explained is a self-paced, eLearning course that covers an introduction to the basic capabilities of iRise and how to use such capabilities to elicit and validate requirements and designs for page flow, page layout, navigation, data, business logic, high fidelity user interfaces and dynamic user interaction using actions, events, alternate views, styles, templates and masters. The course is full of demonstrations and simulations to provide a rich learning experience for new users as well as experienced users that need a quick refresher. After completing the course, participants will be able to start using iRise on real-life projects.
These are both really well done. Even as an iRise employee, I found some new tips and tricks. Go ahead, check them out.
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We just rolled out a new Media Center on the iRise website last week. You should definitely check out the Media Center if you’re interested in learning more about how to use iRise and learning what others are saying about iRise. With the Media Center Launch, we have included 9 new Product “QuickTakes” and 5 Product Walk Through videos. You can also check out general videos on iRise along with video testimonials from our customers and partners.
iRise Product “QuickTakes” are short 2-3 minute videos that cover the following topics:
- Masters and Templates
- The iDoc
- Capturing Text Requirements
- Managing Feedback
- Datasheets
- Walk Through Notes
- iRise and Collaboration
- Building Business Logic
- iRise Scenarios
iRise Product Walk Throughs are longer videos and include detailed demos and explanations of iRise:
- Getting Started with iRise
- Page Components in iRise
- iRise Detailed Demo
Stay tuned as we will be adding more videos to the site in the near future.
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Everything looks better on a Mac, right? And iRise is no exception.
While iRise is not ‘officially’ supporting iRise on the Mac yet, people are already using iRise Studio and iRise Reader on the Mac. So don’t think that you can’t experience the power of visualization on iRise because you are a Mac user, because you can.
iRise’s QA department is also starting to do some preliminary testing with iRise on the latest versions of the 2 emulators to gain some hands-on experience. This blog post discusses some of the Windows operating system or OS emulators that people have been using on the Mac and identifies a couple of key points to keep in mind.
The two emulators which let you run Windows software side-by-side in the Mac OS include:
iRise probably works with Apple’s Boot Camp (which lets you partition you hard drive to dual-boot Windows and the Mac OS), but the two emulator products are being looked at first. Note that the Windows emulators or virtualization software mentioned above lets you run Windows side-by-side within the Mac OS.
Here are some key points to keep in mind:
- RAM - 4 gigabytes of RAM is recommended due to the overhead of running the Mac OS as well as the emulator
- Studio and Reader only – we are not currently looking into running Definition Center on the Mac and do not have any experience with this combination
- Browser – you will need to run the Internet Explorer browser as iRise is not compatible with Safari
- Issues - Parallels seems to have a couple of re-paint issues on newer Java applications that do not occur in Fusion
If you have comments, questions or real life experiences to share, please visit the iRise User Community on Catalyze. We have also posted details of what we are currently testing in our QA department in the iRise General Forum and have started a discussion topic called iRise on the Mac.
For more information on the iRise User Community, check out this link.
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We announced the immediate availability of the iRise simulation template for the iPhone at the Interop and Software 2008 conferences yesterday.
“iRise for iPhone”™ gives business analysts, user experience (UX) professionals and others a way to quickly prototype the look, feel and behavior of iPhone applications by making available pre-defined visualization widgets and templates that can be quickly assembled into a high definition mobile applications.
The template can simulate all of the iPhone’s standard menu icons and user actions, such as using sliders and zooming in and out of screens by “pinching” and “unpinching.” Application designers can use it to create custom buttons, manipulate the menu icons and define the effects of actions such as double-tapping a button.
Our alliance partner, OneSpring, developed the capability and is also providing the “OneSpring iPhone SimDK for iRise”.
Chuck Converse, a senior user experience architect at OneSpring noted, “Most applications, if you design them for mobile devices, are very text-heavy. The iPhone’s display capabilities give designers more freedom and a whole new set of choices.”
The full story is available from these related links:
And here is the YouTube video produced by OneSpring which demos the iRise iPhone capability:
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iRise has expanded its use into the area of packaged applications that include SAP, Oracle, Siebel, PeopleSoft and many other package applications.
I recently presented the value of simulating iRise for SAP along with Melanie Lucas, iRise Enterprise Solutions Manager at the 2007 Partner Summit, pre-cursor to the iRise Fusion 07 User Conference. Its important to recognize the value of simulation beyond custom applications and how similar benefits are achievable with packaged applications like SAP.
Validating requirements for SAP projects is never easy. Packaged software implementations suffer the same poor requirements challenges that custom applications do, the difference is much of the package is already defined. SAP tools exist to prototype SAP applications; however, the SAP tools are cumbersome to rapidly create and iterate with stakeholders and many implementations today are heavily customized and/or heavily integrated, making it very difficult to adapt the SAP tools to vizualize truly what the business has in mind.
Using iRise, Melanie showed how a business analyst can rapidly simulate the SAP screens, data and logic in order to validate requirements quickly and iterate often with stakeholders and IT in order to define the application and get alignment on the end-state. The iDoc is available on Catalyze to iRise customers & partners. Melanie gave examples of what SAP implementations benefit most from simulation:
- SAP CRM - typically involves heavy customization and multiple interfaces to other customer systems
- SAP SCM / Procurement - typically involves heavy customization, often a supplier portal, and integration to back office systems
- SAP HR Portal - HR systems benefit from heavy user validation and review
- Composite Applications using NetWeaver - SAP’s custom development platform, NetWeaver, is being used to create new, custom, “composite” applications that leverage existing SAP modules
Simulating the SAP system provides a way to rapidly assemble a working, functional prototype that can be reviewed and experienced (literally) by stakeholders and IT, with rapid, easy iterations on the prototype to quickly extract and validate the right requirements. Key stakeholders, end-users, analysts and SAP developers can all agree on the right model and requirements ahead of configuring, customizing, developing or integrating the live SAP system. During the presentation, I highlighted some of the benefits from simulating an SAP system:
- Requirements are validated before development/configuration starts
- Rework and mid-stream requirements changes are significantly reduced (by up to 70%)
- SAP simulations (masters, templates, models) can be re-used for greater efficiency in later projects
- Adoption of the system rollout is significantly higher, due to involving and confirming with more stakeholders and end-users upfront
A majority of simulations for SAP have been done by our alliance partners like Capgemini, Accenture and Deloitte – especially since they have the deep SAP expertise. Capgemini, for example, has gone much further and simulated many different SAP modules like CRM, Service Management, Call Center, HR, Supply Chain, etc. – creating an extensive asset library that they can offer to clients as a means to better validate client requirements and a jumpstart to getting started with the SAP blueprint phase. Its proven successful at many clients and demonstrates their deep expertise with SAP.
I am always interested to hear about more simulations involving packaged applications, including SAP.
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Johann Mendoza from iRise’s Application Definition Consulting group conducted a session for Advanced iRise Users at Fusion ‘07. You can download the iDoc that he used from the iRise Users section of Catalyze. Note, you will need to be registered as an iRise User to download the file.
The iDoc contains the completed versions of the exercises covered during the iRise Fusion Advanced Workshop. You will need, at a minimum, iRise Studio v6.0.2 to import the iDoc into iRise Studio. You can use feature of creating a project from an existing iDoc to view the project in iRise Studio.
The examples covered in the iDoc include:
- Home Views
- Accordion
- Tabbed Interface
- Dependent Select
- Predictive Text
- Multiple Branching
- Waiting Page
- Views and Repeating Rows
If you missed the workshop, you can still take advantage of the tips that Johann shared. He is also planning on compiling a step-by-step overview of each feature in the very near future.
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