Monday, October 10, 2005
UIE Full-day Seminar, 8:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Sold Out
Getting the Most Out of Prototypes
Marc Rettig, Founder, Fit Associates
Is your team trying to build innovative designs, but unsure where to begin? Are you missing key information about what users really think of your design? Does everyone on your design team have a different idea about what you're trying to build? These are challenges we hear from clients every week:
- An intranet manager at a major insurance company is constantly battling her design team because they don’t realize what the intranet users are going through. She’d like to know how to get her IT managers on the same page.
- An MIS analyst at a small mid-western university has been chartered with making the university’s web site the best it could be. Having never thought about what key information users will need, he now has to figure out what content to create and what new functionality to add.
Creating prototypes and testing them is still the most effective way we have to ensure our designs meet our users’ needs. The work of creating and evaluating prototypes is one of the anchor activities for web site and product conception, design and development. Prototypes are integral tools for understanding a design problem, evolving a design, improving team collaboration, and communicating effectively with stakeholders.
The better our skills are at creating prototypes, the more valuable the results will be to our organizations. That's why we've turned to Marc Rettig, a world-renowned designer, educator, and researcher, who has put together a fabulous full-day seminar explicitly designed to improve your prototyping skills.
In this session, you’ll learn how to:
- Take advantage of prototypes to evaluate design concepts and features. Marc will show you examples of many different kinds of prototypes, and discuss when each prototype is appropriate during different stages of the development process.
- Apply a wide range of prototyping techniques to generating innovative design concepts. You will see how to create paper prototypes, storyboards, “sticky storms,” interactive sketches, and Wizard of Oz prototypes.
- Use prototypes as tools for communication among members of the development team. Marc will share techniques for using prototypes to involve stakeholders in tests and to resolve conflicts within your team.
- Become a better facilitator. You will learn how to facilitate group prototype-creation sessions, from initial “sticky-storming” to development of more detailed mockups.
- Leverage techniques for engaging people in believable simulations of the future. Marc will demonstrate low-tech, but effective techniques for evaluating how your users will respond to a design concept before it is actually implemented.
- Techniques for “co-design”. You will see how to get your users more involved in concept generation and prototype development.
Marc's designed this seminar to be packed with hands-on exercises. During the day, you will have the opportunity to build two prototypes and use them to evaluate the design. This seminar has plenty of discussion time built in – it’s critical to ensure you can adapt these new techniques to your own practice.
Who Should Attend
No matter how many prototypes you've built and tested – whether it’s a hundred or you’re just about to start your first – you’ll find tremendous value in this seminar. It’s perfect for product managers, designers, engineers, and technical writers – anyone involved with site or product creation or evaluation. This will be one of the most valuable courses you’ll ever take.
In addition to the entertaining lecture and interactive exercises, you will receive a detailed seminar booklet, including all of the slides, plus additional readings, frameworks and essays that will serve as your guide long after the seminar is over.
UI10 Seminar Recommendations: If you're interested in Marc's full-day seminar, you may also want to attend Kelly Goto's seminar, Web site ReDesign Redefined: Strategies for Success.