We got a support email the other day from a guy who thought Jumpchart was way off base. Usually we don’t take the bait, but we decided to send him a courteous response saying how we respectfully thought he was wrong. Mostly, it was the same arguments we usually get:

• The wireframes aren’t descriptive enough visually
• No way to segregate navigation
• It doesn’t deal with “user experience”

We’ve never argued against any of this for Jumpchart. We tend to believe that the beginning document of a website should be very simple, and not illustrative of divisions of space, but rather what content goes where within a site. The web development industry has a lot of blurry lines between types of specialization. 37Signals thinks that designers should do mark-up. We think that most small studios blur their own lines according to strengths of their staff. Which means there is a diverse set of methods for building websites to appeal to. In our opinion, this means the simpler starting document you have, the more agreeable it will be to individual workflows that can shape it to their own methods. That’s why Jumpchart has the simplest non-descriptive layout imaginable for its wireframe preview.

With Jumpchart, we try to appeal not only to the developers, but to the clients as well. We believe that website planning is a collaborative process. We believe that it should be based around telling the unique story that the client has to offer. Which brings us to the quote from the support email that led to this blog post:

“The process of collection all the information before the information architecture is created is, to my mind, slightly backwards. My view is that information architecture is routed not in the actual information but on the task associated with the information. How the information fits in context with those tasks is where the site IA comes from in my view. IAs, ultimately, are not librarians but architects not organsing each book but creating an environment where those books can best be found and used. That’s the first major philosophical difference I can see.”

Which makes our heads twirl… The idea that the practice of organizing information for websites has advanced to a level where we can ignore the information we’re trying to organize is baffling. Creating a system for the content before you see the content, and then trying to shoe-horn it into place is a recipe for a pending redesign. Jumpchart is about exposing the information that the website needs to present. Doing it in a very simple collaborative way, and doing it quickly. Allowing you to change your mind easily and often, and ultimately getting to the build phase. -Which means getting the “what goes where” approved by the client…

We hope that Jumpchart users are enjoying the freedom to organize content, create navigation, and envision their sites without needing to draw little boxes, or think about whether it’s a 2 column, or a 3 column layout. First thing is first, – and in our opinion, content is king.