Harnessing the Power of Annotations - An Interview with Dan Brown

Jared Spool interviews Dan Brown on annotating deliverables.

Choosing an appropriate format for annotations can make them less daunting. No doubt most people use good old-fashioned prose, but we've found that adding some structure to the annotations can make them more readable. For example, for any given interactive element on a page, we will break the annotation into different scripting-like behaviors like onHover or onClick. Developers tend to like that we're trying to speak their language, and it provides some clear structure to the annotation.

We've started adorning our annotations with icons to clarify their purpose. Annotations might describe business logic, editorial guidelines, or display conditions, among others. Each of these functions has a unique icon to help differentiate them on the page.