Paper Prototyping Anyone can do it With common tools and materials

Useful steps: Personas Who are your users? bring them to life Write personas that bring them to life Bill is a 52 year old lecturer who has only recently moved to a smartphone. Bill is still Jane is a digitally-connected undergraduate. Jill is always on her mob, using FB and Twitter. Jill ….

essence Useful steps: Find the essence Smartphone apps are generally best at doing just a few things well “search catalogue and locate book or reserve it” This is not always true, but is a good guide essence

yes/no/maybe Identify scope and constraints Are any constraints raised by the combination of users and essence? What does Bill need in order to use the app? Is Bill in our target audience? What does Jill need in the app to make it both useful and attractive to her?

Get ready to design List things of interest in your app and what’s important about them What parts of a catalogue entry do you need to show? Draw the flow through your app, from screen to screen How …. ?

Do whatever is easy for you But leave out screen design right now Each ‘node’ is a screen Nothing is cast in stone Flexible media is best

Now flesh out the screen designs This is where using a wall or, even better, a whiteboard is great A stickie, an index card, or a cut up piece of paper is a great form factor for a mobile screen Highest permissible tech, photocopies of screen outline

Product almost ready for tests Walkthough !

Plan scenarios Search the catalogue for a book on Sigmund Freud, and then find where it is in the library Reproduce your flow as a guide Gather all the (paper) screens you need to test this with users

Improve your prototype with users Give a potential user the scenario Ask then to use your paper app to perform the scenario task(s) When you find a problem, solve it with the user, draw new screens, try to the new design with the user (and the next users you test with) Congratulations, that’s participatory design

Ready to rock?

Ermmm….. Tech details Some designs don’t survive first contact with a techie, involve them sooner in the design lifecycle, rather than later Organise buy-in

Thank you, questions