Joseph Seeley — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 14:30:22 GMT

I would also be very interested in reading this article. I rely heavily on PowerPoint to create prototypes early in the process, and being able to gather feedback from remote users is one of the reasons. If PDFs can give me the same benefits with more power and comparable effort, I want to know.

I agree with those who say to focus on the PDF technique rather than the comparison with other techniques. Your readers can make their own comparisons. After the Pero PDF Prototyping technique becomes more widely used and known, someone can write the article comparing various techniques.

Joseph Seeley — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:51:37 GMT

I use PowerPoint prototypes often. Maureen and some commenters have described the main techniques. Here are a few tips I have found useful in my circumstances.

* Len mentions having a slide with all the controls and widgets, like a stencil or library. This saves a lot of time. I have a starter PowerPoint file with this slide in it, as well as the transition settings that Maureen mentions.

* Avoid the temptation of linking to Next and Previous slides, and go to named slides (as in Maureen’s examples). You’ll be grateful later when you insert additional slides to flesh out an interaction or show alternatives.

* I go to some lengths to avoid giving the prototype a polished visual design, because we have a graphic designer who gets paid to do that and is better at it than I am, and because I want the clients or users to see the prototype as a rough draft. Also, my prototypes are for exploring site architecture and task flow, which means font and color would just be distracting. (“Can we change this blue to something lighter?”) So, I work in grayscale, use a handwriting font, and highlight navigation tabs with crudely drawn semitransparent ovals. (Despite these efforts to make sure the prototype is seen as an early rough sketch, I still get comments like “I really like the way you highlight the tabs. Can we do that?”)

* I usually end up creating multiple slide masters. In a tabbed interface, one master per tab is typical. An interaction that takes place on a single page may require 4 or 5 slides to portray, and I find that having the common elements of those slides on their own master makes later adjustments easier.

* For remote usability testing, I sometimes put a brief description of the task on all of the relevant slides for easy reference. I like to use a callout box coming down from the upper right of the slide.

* I display the slide title and slide number at the bottom of each slide, in a very light gray. During remote usability testing or walkthroughs, this helps keep everyone on the same page.

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Joseph Seeley