Flowchart: action box or decision box?

my 2c what I would do in this situation:

The user sees one screen, hence there is one rectangular box for the
screen. After that, there is a diamond that branches according to the
decision that user made. Nobody says there can only be 2 outcomes. I
have done diamonds with 4 or 5 outcomes, and the Diagram Police has
not caught me yet, so it's fine.

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Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=44552

I would use the decision diamond as this is what is traditionally used
in flowcharts to represent a decision needing to be made, in this case,
probably what is the user doing to create which state in the system. If
there is a generic decision, such as "What happens?" then have five
different paths leading from the diamond, labeling each path with the
appropriate identifying scenario text, such as "error message is
generated", "success message is generated", goes to some other system,
whatever the case may be.

Hope that helps.

Courtney Jordan

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com
[mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of min
Ouyang
Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2009 3:01 AM
To: discuss at ixda.org
Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Flowchart: action box or decision box?

I'm doing an exercise to practice the design of task flow. I have one
step which has 5 options in it. And the user is supposed to choose one
and move forward. In this case, shall I use the diamond decision box or
the rectangular action box to illustrate this step? I googled a little
bit. And it seems that the outcome of a diamond box is usually YES or NO
instead of options. Where can I find more complicated samples for
learning purpose? Thanks.
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On Mike's note: I have found that a system's behavior can be modeled
in two ways. For engineers, there is the UML Activity Diagram, which
is what the first link refers to. And then there is Garrett's
Information Architecture/Navigation Map/UI flow diagram. They look
deceptively similar because they share some (not all) of the same
elements, but I've found I get the best results when I keep these
two things separate, since they need to emphasize different things
for different audiences.

So, as is said, "it's best to target the communication method to
fit the needs of the intended audience". Is this a specification for
an engineer to code the system, or beginning point of sketching and
designing the UI screens? Both are valid, but deserve a different
approach.

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Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=44552

I think perhaps the conditional branch (triangle) is more appropriate,
however the trick is to look at what the outcome of a step is.

Basically: Does choosing any of the 5 options returns the same page?
Or does it return one of 5 possible pages depending on the choice?

For example:
If the outcome is one two possible paths depending on an answer
(yes/no), then branch = diamond

If the the outcome is one of 3 or more paths depending on multiple
choice, then branch = triangle

If the outcome is only one path regardless of which options where
chosen, then no branching

Hope it helps :)

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Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=44552