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Prototyping Mistakes

A prototyping tool

I just published a new article on UXmatters, Avoiding Common Prototyping Mistakes. This topic came from my repeated experience making these mistakes when prototyping. There are so many great, new prototyping tools out there. It seems new tools are popping up every week.

The great thing about these new prototyping tools is that they make it so easy to create realistic looking and interactive prototypes. However, the problem is that it’s very easy to get carried away by trying to show too much in the prototype. You think, “I’ll show how this works. Well then I guess I might as well show this too.” The next thing you know, you’ve spent hours creating something really impressive but really complicated.

In this article I discuss and provide solutions for these six prototyping problems:

  • Jumping too soon into prototyping
  • Failing to plan what to prototype
  • Prototyping at the wrong fidelity
  • Getting carried away by creating too much
  • Failure to explain types of prototypes
  • Not creating a guide for navigating the prototype

 

Check out Avoiding Common Prototyping Mistakes on UXmatters.

Paper Prototyping: Is it still worth it?

In my latest UXmatters article, I compare the latest prototyping tools to paper prototyping. Paper has long had the advantage in allowing designers to quickly and easily create early prototypes, that look unfinished, and encourage users to honestly provide criticism. However, the latest prototyping tools have caught up to, and in some cases surpassed, paper in making it very easy and quick to create prototypes without any coding.

So, do the advantages of paper prototypes still beat these new prototyping tools? That’s what I explore in my latest article, Prototyping: Paper Versus Digital.

Image credit: Samuel Mann