Templates and toolkits

• Index of resources
  Checklists and document templates from Gerry Gaffney's Information and Design.

• Graffletopia
  "As a web designer, I've been using OmniGraffle for years. It's fantastic for designing interfaces — miles better than Adobe Illustrator for most tasks. Stencils are a big part of why Graffle is great. So, hopefully, this website will make it easier to find cool stencils."
  (Patrick Crowley)

• IA stencils for Omnigraffle
  These stencils--includes flow map and block diagram shapes--are free for download and use have been created for use with Omnigraffle.

• IA tools
  Document templates, process map posters, wireframe templates and other tools for information architects from AIFIA.

• Omnigraffle stencils
  Designed for use with Omnigroup visual communication software for Mac OS/X, these two Omnigraffle stencils were created to help communicate user-centered design activities and proposals to clients and development teams.

• Persona creation and usage toolkit (PDF)
  Personas are supposed to be tools to aid in making design trade-offs. But too often they've become more of a check-off item. Arguably this is because personas as commonly done lack enough actionable detail to help make hard decisions that occurs as strategy resolves into interface. Notes from Making Personas More Powerful, a presentation by George Olsen at the 5th IA Summit.

• Usability test data logger
  Most people use Microsoft Excel to analyse the results of usability tests, but did you know you can use it to collect the data too? This spreadsheet allows you to measure task completion rates, analyse questionnaire data, and summarise participant comments. It even includes a timer so you can measure time-on-task.

• Usability toolkit
  A collection of forms, checklists and other useful documents for conducting usability tests and user interviews from the STC Usability SIG.

• User interface library
  A library of commonly-used interface elements that eliminates the need to re-create buttons, menus, windows, or fields from scratch. These interface elements mimic real, platform-specific interface standards and can be used to create UI prototypes.

• User profile forms
  Create user profiles using these are four-page forms that will help you gather information about users, such as education, age, and computer usage.
  (Gerry Gaffney)

• Visio stencils for information architects
  Wireframe, sitemap and process flow stencils for Visio 2003.
  (Nick Finck)

• Visio, the interaction designer's nail gun (2nd edition)
  "This is a second edition of the article on using Visio for rapid prototyping for the web. The new edition includes a new and improved version of the GUUUI Prototyping Tool for Visio 2003."
  (Henrik Olsen)