Question

Looking for the best practice here… I would like to allow multiple users to provide feedback against a single SketchFlow project. They would also like this ability so that they could see everyone else’s annotations. I realize that they could very well do this now, but is there a way to distinguish what feedback belongs to a given user?

It seems to me that there are two possible solutions, both seem a bit kludgey:

1. Single .feedback file — Ask users to each use their own color (i.e. Tom always uses red, Sally always uses blue, etc)…or, ask users to include their initials in their feedback statements.

2. Individual .feedback files — Publish (copy) the SketchFlow project to individual folders, one folder for each user. While this would definitely distinguish user feedback, they would not be able to see other users’ feedback.

Answer 1

It is amazing how fast technology evolves and improves! With the advent of the just-released (June 7, 2010) SketchFlow/Blend version 4 there is a much more elegant way to handle this. SketchFlow 3 followed the hub-and-spoke approach, where multiple reviewers could submit feedback, but only the designer could see them all. SketchFlow 4 lets you publish to SharePoint with one click, where all reviewers may now see each others’ comments. The (minor) drawbacks, though, are two:

• You must have SharePoint.
• You must use a Silverlight prototype (not a WPF prototype).

For further reading, I direct you to these:

• Expression evangelist Christian Schormann, Collaborative SketchFlow Feedback with SharePoint, June 6, 2010.
• My just-published article Creating WPF Prototypes with SketchFlow, June 18, 2010. See the Managing Feedback section.