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Ten Pro Tips for Prototyping

with Fred Beecher

Fred sorts his tips into two main categories: tactical and strategic. You can find his slides on his Twitter profile (linked above).

  • tactical

    • be lazy
      • prototype just enough to achieve your goal
      • in order to do this, you need to have a clearly defined goal
        • it would be perfectly reasonable to create prototypes to disprove certain ideas, or to get an idea off the table
    • plan before you prototype
      • write the usability test plan before you build your prototype *
    • create plausible content
    • think lo-fi
      • (as much as is possible, depending on the problem/usability test at hand)
      • what is the lowest level of visual and functional fidelity that you can get away with?
    • choose your weapon
      • use the right tool for the job
        • what's your goal?
        • what level of functional fidelity do you need to achieve your goal?
        • is this native mobile?
        • this can be informed by user research, but should also balance resource availability
      • invision inspect
        • consumes a sketch file and highlights important things for developers
          • spacing between elements
          • some basic CSS
          • Zeplin is less integrated with Invision
    • show examples; document details
      • show and tell
        • just showing doesn't really reveal all detail
        • just telling is straight-up annoying
          • do both.
      • show at least one example of every interaction
        • off of the top of your head, there are probably five or six things that could go wrong in a login page
          • you do not need to prototype all of these
          • write the error message for what happens if someone gets a username wrong
            • then, in your documentation, write out all of those variations
            • they do not all need to exist in the prototype

  • strategic

    • take risks
      • go with your crazy ideas, then test them
    • seek in-validation
      • look for failures rather than successes
      • tell participants you had nothing to do with these designs, whether that is true or not
        • this will help minimize people holding back negative feedback for fear of being offensive
    • prototype everything
      • you can prototype more than just digital products
    • prototype everywhere
      • doesn't have to just be in the middle of the process
      • prototyping is useful at all stages of product development