One of the biggest problems when developing a system, be it software or a website, is getting the customer to visualise how your proposed solution is going to work.
Quite often, you will get a long way down the path towards producing your solution before you get any meaningful feedback.
The big early career lesson for most programmers is showing an unfinished piece of software to the eventual users and assuming that they will be able to visualise how the software will eventually look and behave. They won’t!
So, what’s the solution. How can you help your customers visualise your solution in the design phase, not the production phase? The answer is paper prototyping, a simple yet effective method of designing a system’s user interface and performing usability testing.
Put simply, paper prototyping involves creating a paper/card based model of your proposed system. You can mimic interactivity by the use of cut-out elements. One person takes the place of the computer and makes sure that the paper model interacts with the user. You can then garner feedback from your users on how well the system suits their needs. All without resorting to the time consuming task of creating the system on a computer.
Why you should be interested in paper prototyping:
- Test your design in the design phase. Iterate the design before you go into production when changes are cheap;
- Save money: cutting up paper and card is not expensive in either material or time;
- Save time: you can create a prototype in just a few hours not the days weeks it takes to create a digital prototype;
- Easy to learn: paper prototyping is so simple you can learn it very quickly;
- Even if your artistic skills are very modest, it doesn’t matter, it’s the design that shines through.
If you are interested in a deeper look into paper prototyping, Carolyn Snyder has written an excellent book: Paper Prototyping. The book website also has a simple introduction, and there are some sample chapters too.
The Nielsen Norman Group also have a training video on paper prototyping.
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OMG! It is like a role playing game, except, for using a computer!
PLAYER: “Okay, I save my file.”
GM: [dice clatters, looks up chart] Okay, you try to save your file, A new window pops up on the screen that indicates a general I/O error, but gives no specific details.
PLAYER: “Oh no! I open up the case, and pull the boot disc off of the IDE controller!”
GM: Okay. [dice clatters] Well, you manage to open up the case without tripping the power, but you’re not familiar with the internal workings of this machine. You can’t locate any IDE drives…
@Mantari: I guess you could say that
Though, I usually manage without the dice!
Paper prototyping is a usability testing technique not a design technique.
“… prototyping is like a spiral closing in along a single trajectory.”
“Design is about exploring and comparing the relative merits of alternatives. There is not just one path, and at any given time and for any given question, there may be numerous different alternatives being considered, only one of which will eventually find itself in the product.”
Sketching User Experience: getting the design right and the right design. (Author website)
http://www.billbuxton.com/
Getting the Right Design and the Design Right: Testing Many Is Better Than One (pdf)
http://www.billbuxton.com/rightDesign.pdf
User Sketches: A Quick, Inexpensive, and Effective way to Elicit More reflective User Feedback (pdf)
http://www.billbuxton.com/UserSketches.pdf
@Isaac: usability testing is a design technique. You perform usability testing in order to find out whether a design is effective or not. So, I don’t understand why you are saying that usability testing isn’t a design technique.
(I don’t understand why the Name/Mail fields in this form force what I type to uppercase – I keep checking if I accidentally hit caps lock.)
“feedback from your users on how well the system suits their needs” doesn’t tell us how much better some other design might suit their needs – design is about exploration of alternatives, prototyping is about refinement of one alternative.
>“feedback from your users on how well the system suits their needs” doesn’t tell us how much better some other design might suit their needs
True…prototype & test multiple solutions.
If a process can’t be agreed upon by people, the computer is not going to make it any more possible. It only transfers the burden of management to the programmer, who usually has the least amount of experience, authority, and desire to manage others.
Another advantage of paper design is it serves as an audit trail, which comes in very handy for dealing with customers who want changes made without paying for them.
Is this something you have been successful with jack? We do the mockups first before programming but have never considered using paper. I don’t know how effective it would be when 95% of our clients are remotely located (I’m in Belgium and clients are in the US)
@ses5909 – yes, we’ve used it successfully. Not sure how you could use it remotely though. Perhaps you could paper prototype until you are happy with the design and then move onto a digital prototype when you are happy you’ve found a workable design.
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