Why We Prototype

Last week I was perusing my RSS feeds and saw a interesting posting from A List Apart, a web design and development blog. The posting was titled "Paper Prototyping." The article described a low tech means of website definition using paper. These paper prototypes utilize manila file folders. Main site sections are hand written on the tabs. Text clippings are glued to pages to describe content. Handwritten notes detail features and functionality. Buttons are cut out of paper and glued to the folders. Retro.

Another feed I subscribe to recently posted an article called "Don't make the Demo look Done" which observes that mock-ups should not be too detailed. Rather, pencil sketches can be a better means of communication than refined Photoshop layouts.

Each of these postings pointed out that counterintuitive methods for communicating about technology, using explicitly non-technical means, can work much better than technically detailed methods.

Here are some specific observations from these two articles...

1. "...many people are intimidated by a formal, highly technical design process..." [Paper Prototyping].

2. "The prototyping stage is the right time to catch design flaws and change directions, and the flexibility and disposability of paper encourages experimentation and speedy iteration" [Paper Prototyping].

3. "Show them something polished and pretty, and you'll get feedback on font sizes. The reviewers make incremental tweaks, blinded by what's in front of them. But show a napkin sketch, and they don't just see what's there, they see what's possible" [Don't Make the Demo Look Done].

I completely agree with these insights and I commend the efforts these developers have made to do whatever it takes to find ways to effectively communicate about the web with their clients. But ironically, I have found that paper based documents, by virtue of their being paper, create other occasions for misunderstanding and don't go nearly far enough to communicate the subtleties of a website's content, structure, and functionality. Paper is part of the problem in web communication. The fact that paper cannot be clicked, linked, and viewed in a browser is a fundamental limitation as a means of website documentation. There is just something about the act of clicking that facilitates the process of understanding how a website will work.

Nevertheless, their observations about the problems with technical specification are real. We made many of the same observations back in 2000, which lead us to experiment with new ways to communicate about our website projects. The approach we discovered, however, was very different.   next >