Paper Prototyping - Highly Effective Lo-Fi
January 26th, 2007
Our friends at the highly respected A List Apart have come out this week with an article near and dear to us, Paper Prototyping.
…the prototyping stage is the right time to catch design flaws and change directions, and the flexibility and disposability of paper encourages experimentation and speedy iteration. Instead of “deleting” hours worth of layout code you’ve used to position a column in the right place, you can draw a prototype, throw away the ideas that don’t work, and move on.
Another benefit of the use of paper is it’s highly inclusive to the non technical people who may be involved in the design process. Someone might not dive right into Flash/Dreamweaver/Photoshop, but they can pick up the scissors and sharpie pen and draw some boxes and arrows to get their point across.
[We've been talking about Paper Prototyping for some time, and if you're interested in learning more on how you can quickly unite your stakeholders with wheat paste, you're in luck! On February 6, 2007 we'll be holding our next Virtual Seminar, Paper Prototyping: Streamlining the User-Centered Design Process. Our friend and colleague Carolyn Snyder will be presenting, and she literally wrote the book on Paper Prototyping: Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Design and Refine User Interfaces]
January 26th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
Paper prototyping can be highly collaborative. Suggest it also reduces the barriers to “non technical” folks wanting to be involved in the design process.
There is still something singular about a person using a design or development tool on a PC. It does not always lend itself to joint efforts and the tool itself can scare “non technical” folks.
February 13th, 2007 at 11:09 am
Brian and Daniel I couldn’t agree more. The collaborative/participatory nature of paper prototyping is, for me, its greatest strength. (Even to the point of being able to ask participants evaluating paper interfaces to draw their ideal solution when problems occur. ‘Could you show me what you’d expect to see here.’) A great way to co-design with domain experts, it’s been one of my favourite tools for a long time.