Some time ago I read an interesting article from Scott Ambler where he suggests using whiteboards for initial modeling and later, photographing the whiteboard as documentation. I don’t think he created the technique but it was the first time I saw it and I like it very much.
I have been recently working on Bangalore, India, assisting my client in negotiating a new plan for their project with the company we were visiting. My colleague used heavily this trick - people even mock at the “Picture! Picture!” motto. This simple technique was one of the key points in our work. It’s was an aid for everybody’s memory, it permitted a double check to our annotations and it was a proof of the decisions made.
I’d like to point some tips:
1. a good digital camera is fantastic for this task but even your cell phone photos can sometimes do the job;
2. the flash of your camera can make some points of the whiteboard unreadable. Try with and without it.
3. you don’t necessarily have to improve your pictures.
In Scott Ambler’s article he suggests commercial software to improve the images. I found that the freeware PhotoFiltre do a great job. It not only distorts the images but also improves the contrast, colors and many other effects. In fact, it is a good recommendation to everyone that posses a digital camera.
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