prototypes to work
out your frameworks
Highlights
- Pictures aren't reality
- Don't rush your relationship
- Take time to save time
Prototyping is Like Online Dating…
Personality can’t be conveyed by pictures alone. As with people, you only get a real sense of character by interaction. Same applies to sites and apps.
Prototyping makes it possible to work out primary features and attributes before a design can paint you into any corner. Doesn’t matter if you’ve been designing sites for years, each project is at least a little different and should be treated accordingly.
A design is like a picture on a dating site. Yeah, the person looks pretty hot, but the reality might be a different story. And pretty can sometimes be pretty difficult to interact with.
“But this takes time!” – goes the argument. No necessarily much and you might spend a lot less time on aesthetics if you’ve done a thorough job translating the project needs into wireframes and testing those translations with working versions. Skipping these steps is like expecting others to know how to deal with your personal baggage and ssumptions don’t make for smart choices.
So before you start rushing through the relationship, get to know your website, mobile app, online service, etc. by prototyping. Don’t let those pretty pictures fool you or sooner or later your fantasy world could come crashing down.
More on Prototyping
I’m a big fan of prototyping in HTML (like with LegendList) because uses real-world situations and gets us working towards important code early. You can’t get this with a PDF. User Interface Engineering posted something about this very thing this morning that I thought was worth including here.
See From PDFs to HTML Prototypes.
Great stuff! I feel like I’m learning a lot through your posts. Keep them up!
My pleasure. Glad it helps!
Weszt, your work is amazing!
Can you articulate a bit more on why HTML prototyping is better than pfd etc? How many interactive action do you think is appropriate for prototyping? I found a new tool AppSketcher (www.appsketcher.com) and wonder if it can produce the kind of work you produced.
Whatever code you create in prototyping with HTML could likely be applied to the final product. You just need to optimize.
AppSketcher looks pretty interesting. I’d have to try it out to know for certain, but the idea seems pretty sound. Curious to see how much control there really is – though I assume one would have complete control once done prototyping.