Boxes And Arrows : The Design Behind the Design

I agree, this would be a great article. The team I am part of has currently been debating this topic and at a higher level whether or not this process should be owned by IA as opposed to using in-house developers to create an interactive prototype. We tested iRise for a few months and the general feeling among the IA’s was that it is very unintuitive and has some serious limitations when it comes to building more complex interactions that in HTML and JavaScript are accomplished very easily. Work arounds were suggested by the iRise rep, but they were not be sufficient for taking into user testing when the objective is really to test very specific interaction. Overall, our experience with iRise was disappointing. However, those of us who have demo’d Intuitec have had very good feedback and are interested in trying to use it for our next prototyping project. It would be fantastic to hear about other methods and technologies being used for prototyping.

It’d be great to give people the language to communicate about prototypes. Even simple stuff like differentiating between a “looks-like” and “works-like” prototype can go a long way.

Thanks!

Prototyping is integral in producing good UI and designs at the get-go, however, it is always a struggle to figure out what’s the best method and/or tool. I’ve seen a constant struggle between taking UI to development and trying to test a partially built prototype to get feedback before too much is invested in a final product. This always leads to problems with the prototype having limitations and the true impact of the design being side-stepped for testing purposes. I’d love to see any ideas in regards to prototyping that are efficient and effective, from tools, to methods.

I would also like to see a discussion of how the prototyping process is affected by the tools used. This would of course, depend on the specific designer and their skillset, but….I’m interested in two different stages of prototyping: brainstorming and mocking-up a design to share with others. It is difficult to determine the appropriate boundary of these phases. I have always felt that paper prototypes are more useful for brainstorming and more formal prototypes (with callouts to explain interaction details) are more useful in communicating ideas to others.

This is because I feel that paper prototypes do not limit my ability to quickly capture ideas when brainstorming as graphical environments do. I can focus on creating the ideas, not on the presentation of my ideas. However, my paper prototypes tend to be less detailed and therefore ambiguous. When I share them with others, they tend to misunderstand my vision (which can sometimes lead to good results, but usually makes more work since I now have to remove the misunderstood, bad design vision that a client is carrying around in their brain and expecting to see implemented).

I think this would be a great topic for an article, and I’d be particularly interested in finding out how people have worked prototyping into the Agile process, i.e., does it expedite the process, does it create advantages for the UI designer, etc.

Todd, I’m a bit sketchy on the nature of the article—is it a survey, a case study, or general theory? Is the focus on trends or guidance?

Great idea—I’d like to see this article. There are so many different approaches to prototyping—method, materials, when in the process, etc. In particular I think it would be nice to see an overview of different methods (maybe case study/process overviews for specific companies or practitioners?) and different ways of applying them in the product design lifecycle. Are prototypes used to generate ideas? Validate designs with users? Refine product/business requirements? Communicate vision to the VP/C levels? I bet there are vast differences in the ways people are applying prototypes to their work. What about the paper vs. screen prototypes debate that’s going on over on the IxDA discussion boards? Lots of interesting perspectives there… Good luck Todd, I hope to see this on B&A in the future.