A short discussion about paper-prototyping in support of the book, Paper Prototyping, by Carolyn Snyder. - Read more

You can't think of paper prototyping without acknowledging Carolyn Snyder's influence on the technique. Her many years of experience teaching and utilizing paper prototyping have made her a recognized authority figure in the field. In 2003, Carolyn wrote the definitive book, Paper Prototyping, which explores many of the method's nuances and acts as a complete guide for design teams. Read more here... - Read more

As interfaces become ever more complex and development schedules seem to get shorter and shorter, you may find it useful to give up your user-interface modeling software for awhile in favor of something simpler. All you need is paper, pens, scissors, and your imagination (01/07). - Read more

With a paper prototype, you can user test early design ideas at an extremely low cost. Doing so lets you fix usability problems before you waste money implementing something that doesn't work (04/03). - Read more

You need to make a set of web design mockups for your client. You’d like to find an easy way to show these mockups in clean XHTML and CSS code, because plain JPGs don’t convey the full sense of the design, and sliced tables are evil. In fact, let’s forget table slices ever existed (01/07). - Read more

Deceived by their ideas of what clients will accept, many web development teams build prototypes that are too costly and doesn't serve the purpose prototypes are supposed to. To exploit the full potential of prototyping, it's critical to choose the appropriate level of fidelity (Q3/2005). - Read more

When we show a work-in-progress (like an alpha release) to the public, press, a client, or boss... we're setting their expectations. And we can do it one of three ways: dazzle them with a polished mock-up, show them something that matches the reality of the project status, or stress them out by showing almost nothing and asking them to take it "on faith" that you're on track (12/06). - Read more

We’d like to respond to some of the questions we’ve heard recently at our courses on prototyping, and provide tips on how to make this technique work well for you (03/00). - Read more

If you are the happy owner of a tablet computer or a pen tablet you can hand-draw prototypes on your computer. In this article we'll look at what hand-sketching is good for and how to built hand-drawn prototypes in Visio (Q3/06). - Read more

The best way to improve the effectiveness of your company's web site is to let your site's users lend you a hand (quite literally) through the process of paper prototyping (06/04). - Read more

We are developing an interactive tool called SILK that allows designers to quickly sketch an interface using an electronic pad and stylus. SILK preserves the important properties of pencil and paper: a rough drawing can be produced very quickly and the medium is very flexible. However, unlike a paper sketch, this electronic sketch is interactive and can easily be modified. In addition, our system allows designers to examine, annotate, and edit a complete history of the design (ca. 1994). - Read more

While the traditional documents provide value in certain contexts, in order to create real-world interfaces, it sometimes helps to scale back the role of these documents and move into the code sooner. Clearly, jumping into HTML sooner isn’t always the answer, but it is a perfectly reasonable option that clearly deserves consideration. Determining whether it’s right for you and your project depends on many different factors (03/06). - Read more

Regardless of what you call it, the mockup can either sell your design or plummet you into a cyclical tunnel of churn. That’s why, like it or not, interface designers often live and die by the mockup (02/06). - Read more

Paper prototypes or other mockups are used clarify requirements and enable draft interaction designs and screen designs to be very rapidly simulated and tested. - Read more

Prototypes often model one flow of interaction – the path that users are most likely to take. But when we create interaction designs with dynamic and complex flows, we often need to include deviations from the sunshine scenarios to see whether they work. In this article, we'll look at how to do this Visio and Axure (Q4/06). - Read more

A couple of weeks ago when I talked about The Feature Bob Invented, I mentioned that we use PowerPoint as an easy way to prototype UI, especially in the early stages of design. A number of people have asked me for more details, and so today I thought I'd go through it step-by-step (02/06). - Read more

Hang around information architects and user-centered designers for even a brief period of time and two questions will invariably come up: What tools should I use for prototyping, and; What technologies do I need to know? (07/03). - Read more

Are there any downsides of prototyping? Not really. But as with everything else in life, you might stumble and hurt yourself if you don’t watch your step. This article points out some of the banana skins to steer clear off (Q1/07). - Read more

While some may claim that prototyping isn't one of the wonders of the world, it's definitely a wonder of web and software development. It can help us design better products and overcome many of the hurdles that tend to surface during a development process (Q4/05). - Read more

Using the techniques of paper prototyping and usability testing, we showed the team how to get quick feedback on their product before they had invested a lot of development effort. Total time required: about 6 days. - Read more