History

The EightShapes Unify system began in 2004, when the idea of creating more robust wireframe specifications emerged during work at a previous job. There, it was clear that the team was reusing components and pages in interesting ways, and Visio just wasn’t cutting it anymore. Specs were very detailed, and include a myriad of variations to communicate concepts visually adjacent to the deeper annotations. Therefore, Adobe Illustrator as a wireframing tool was combined with Adobe InDesign as a document-production and annotation tool, with wireframes dynamically linked into documents that were ultimately exported to PDF.

Looking back, even then the standard black bar with descriptive document metadata was there: company logo, author name, email address, date published, version number, and – of course – document title.

Sun’s Extreme Wireframing

As EightShapes came into being in 2006, we were engaged by Sun Microsystems to build a documentation system around their comprehensive page component library. Over 300 components (such as masthead, video player, sidebar banners, and more) in use across the site, each one matched to a code snippet in a formal library to ensure consistent use.

EightShapes worked with Sun to build a formal documentation system for interaction designers and information architects to rapidly create wireframes consistent with the system. Thus the first documentation system was born. Big mistake during this implementation? A single, integrated file was used for both wireframes and deliverable documents, embedding all artwork in one place and completely stifling reuse.

INDD in INDD & The Black Bar

In 2007, with a couple more documentation systems under our belts, two big changes occured.

First, InDesign CS3 was released and enabled one InDesign document to by dynamically placed into and linked to another document. Gone was the pressure to buy – and learn – two products (Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign) for producing wireframes fast. Instead, teams now separated design and deliverable for good by creating one set of InDesign templates for wireframes, and another for deliverable documents.

Secondly, we took a step back, tried to learn from our mistakes, and created a standardized deliverable template set for creating documents. It had the recognizable black bar and white type across the top.

Since creating this “v2″ of the documentation system, we’ve worked with nine UX teams (and over 250 user experience designers) to teach them how to create better design and documentation using what is now EightShapes Unify. While their wireframing templates and libraries are all very distinct (for obvious reasons), every single team has adopted the same deliverable templates.

Unify & the 2009 IA Summit

Having acknowledged that pretty much every team that adopted the system is adopting the SAME deliverable templates, we decided to give ‘em a name (Unify) and give ‘em away for free for the better of the community. The official announcement came during Nathan Curtis’ 2009 IA Summit talk “Be Unique or a Wear a Uniform? Unify Your Deliverables.”

Timeline

Summer 2002-2004: Adobe Illustrator used for modular wireframes and deliverables, the latter of which is created by PDFing page-by-page and using Acrobat to assemble
Summer 2005: First deliverable templates created in Adobe InDesign that are precursor to documentation system
July 2006: First paid client engagement to create a documentation system
Spring 2007: Adobe InDesign CS3 launches and includes capability to place InDesign file into another InDesign files; Adobe Illustrator abandoned for wireframing in favor of Adobe InDesign
March 2009: EightShapes Unify launched at 2009 IA Summit, publicly available for download
May 2009: EightShapes Unify v2 published (CS3 compatible, includes wireframes templates)
June 2009: First public paid EightShapes Unify workshop (on deliverables) a success!