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I’m a huge fan of inline editing. AJAX technologies have made it relatively easy to allow users to directly manipulate data on screen, without going into some ‘edit’ mode. To me, flickr is one of the best examples of the usage of inline editing. For example, when browsing your own photo’s, it is just a matter of click and type to change a photo title or description, have a look at the video below:

As you can see in the video, no separate ‘edit’ mode. Just click the description to start typing. There are some visual clues that this text isn’t static: the background color changes when the mouse hovers over it and the cursor also changes into a ‘text-insert’ icon.

This way of editing enables a very smooth user experience, the flow isn’t interrupted at all.

Andrew Berkowitz from Sparkplug wrote a nice article on how they have been working on multiple iterations of a single screen for their Teamsnap application. If you’re in interaction/experience design, this is definitely a must-read.

To me, the most important point he makes is that, often, wireframes just don’t capture your imagination and ideas well enough. Besides, clients tend to treat wireframes as a final document: this is how everything will look in the final design. Leaving virtually no room for improvement or new insights along the way.

Here at Lost Boys we’re currently experimenting with other ways to show clients what we have in mind for them. At the moment Getting Real seems like an interesting approach, although this doesn’t always work, especially for big projects. Also, your client must be willing to trust you enough to start working (and thus spending their money) without having completely spec’d what you’re going to do.