We need to overcome the "gulf of knowledge"; the idea that the more you are an expert on a topic, or the more you are exposed to or use something on a day-to-day basis, actually hurts your ability to explain it to others and think about it from the perspective of someone with no knowledge of the topic.

Application Workflow

It seems like iChat provides a good model for the application workflow. The one piece we would need to add is saving the whiteboard sessions, similar to saving chat transcripts.

• I launch jabberPad and am presented with a blank whiteboard
  • or the last drawing I was working on?
• After doodling for a bit, I decide that I want to invite Tom to help with an idea
• I click on the People icon and see that Tom is in jabberPad as well, so I send him an invitation to join my session
  • maybe two types of invitations: a normal invitation is drawing and text chat or an audio invitation provides voice chat
• Now we can collaborate on the whiteboard together using both text and voice
• I can invite additional guests as I or Tom choose

Sessions

I'm struggling with figuring out how the sessions, like the default Public session, fit into the workflow. Some questions I have come across:

1. By default, drawings start out in the "public" session. Does this mean that any drawings in the public session are available to anyone?
2. What if I just want to do some drawings offline to save for sharing later?
3. What if I make changes to a drawings started in a shared session while offline; then reconnect with the original collaborator; are the changes I made synced over as soon as he joins the session?
4. How would you explain the sessions table to your mom or wife? If Kimberly wants to share a drawing with me or Lydia and I want to draw together when I am away from home, how does this work? How can we put the idea of a session into "mom" terminology?

General Design Thoughts

• always maintain focus on primary content
  • drawing on whiteboard should be main focus
  • main UI should be toolbar with popovers for menu items; the rest of the screen is for drawing
• reduce or avoid full-screen transitions
• document picker for browsing and selecting save whiteboards
• restore state from the last application run (I can see pros and cons here)

see attachments for images