- Mobile Prototyping with Axure 7
- Will Hacker
- 827字
- 2021-07-21 18:06:59
Reasons for prototyping
We prototype so we can fail. Yes, so we can fail, but in a safe manner. While we don't usually want to fail at our work, the goal of prototyping is really to find flaws in our designs while we are still in the early phases of a design project. As we find the design problems, either in our screen flows or the user interface, we can try new design solutions before we get to the development stage. A rapid, iterative approach to design allows potential problems to shake out at the UX (User Experience) design phase, before expensive development work begins. If we skip what I call the "prototype-test-rework-repeat" phase, we can be left with design flaws that have to be fixed in the real application. This is more costly to your business and can alienate customers and stakeholders, if those design flaws made it into the final product.
But prototyping isn't new, and didn't begin with the software industry. Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci created hand-drawn studies of works that they would eventually render in paint or stone. Architects build scale paper and wood models of buildings to better communicate the final design and appearance to their clients. Automobile manufacturers create full-sized working prototypes of future vehicles they refer to as "concept cars" that are used to see how the public and industry react to the design of a new body style and other future features. In short, prototypes allow us to explore and interact with designs of all kinds of things before we commit them to stone, steel, or expensive application code.
The RITE way to prototype
One way I've seen prototyping work in a real-world setting is by using a method known as RITE (Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation). This is a method of usability testing in which we make changes to the prototype between individual sessions. The goal is to remove usability issues once they have been encountered a few times, so we can learn about other problems that we may not have seen yet because of the earlier ones. This makes our test sessions more informative by uncovering more problems than we would by testing one prototype.
I've conducted many mobile app and website usability test sessions using prototypes created completely in Axure. In one such test, as the test team learned about problems with the visibility of some of the interface elements, a team member was able to make changes to the prototype in between test sessions and the problems disappeared, allowing us to learn about new usability problems.
Working smarter with prototypes
Taking the extra steps to create and test a prototype can make us more productive in the long run. Consider this fictitious example:
Imagine a newly launched airline website where people can only select their seat after they purchase a ticket. Now imagine the cancelations and calls to support centers that follow when frequent fliers find they can no longer see and choose their seat before buying a ticket. Corporate customers are enraged because of the inconvenience to their traveling workforce and bad public relations follow. Airline management can't allow this. The ticket purchase process will have to be reengineered at a substantial cost of time and money. This only damages the airline's bottom line and leaves its customers angry.
Welcome to a world without prototypes. It is not a pretty place.
In the case of our fictitious airline website, changes will need to be made to the purchase process. These can come at a substantial cost and it may not be possible to pass these costs along to customers because airlines operate in competitive and price-sensitive markets. The airline's website project will be less successful than hoped for and could create a long-lasting negative impression of the brand among frequent fliers of the carrier.
Similar mistakes are made everyday in software development. Product managers and designers make important decisions about significant design details without feedback from the final users and risk the success of their products and potentially the future of their companies.
Jared Spool, founder of User Interface Engineering, discusses prototyping in his September 20, 2012 column, Exploring the Problem Space Through Prototyping at http://www.uie.com/articles/four_phases_prototyping/:
Design is all about tradeoffs. Learning how each tradeoff affects the outcome is core to great design.
One of the things we saw from the best designers is their use of prototypes to explore the problem. The prototype is the instrument they used to uncover previously hidden constraints and to see the shifts in the outcome of the design.
Spool concludes:
In the end, it's all about creating great designs. Those designs are great because they find the best intersection of the users, technology, and business dimensions. That can only happen when the team really understands the landscape of the problem space. Prototypes are an effective tool for exploring that landscape.
This is why prototyping and iterative user research are invaluable parts of successful user experience design.
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