Dariusz Grabka — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 20:21:54 GMT

Thanks for the article Fred. I agree very much that in organisations with waterfall methods (or remnants of waterfall methods), vetting ideas with prototypes of all levels of fidelity is very valuable.

In waterfall environments the cost of barking up the wrong design tree is extremely high, so the idea of iterating a few designs amongst the design and stakeholder teams typically receives warm feedback. This is especially true if the UX, BA, or design professional has the ability to crank out some functional options. This is where tools such as Axure, and other tools that facilitate “highly functional” prototypes, are very valuable.

One problem with waterfall structures is not that there’s no -desire- for user feedback, but that the viable opportunities for it tend to be limited to requirements gathering. Introducing new places to formally accept end-user feedback (such as a prototype vetting phase of design) may not be a hard sell for the organisation.

Thanks,
D$

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Dariusz Grabka