Effective Prototyping for Software Makers

Description

Much as we hate to admit it, most prototyping practice lacks a sophisticated understanding of the broad concepts of prototyping—and its strategic position within the development process. Often we overwhelm with a high fidelity prototype that designs us into a corner. Or, we can underwhelm with a prototype with too much ambiguity and flexibility to be of much use in the software development process.

This book will help software makers—developers, designers, and architects—build effective prototypes every time: prototypes that convey enough information about the product at the appropriate time and thus set expectations appropriately.

This practical, informative book will help anyone—whether or not one has artistic talent, access to special tools, or programming ability—to use good prototyping style, methods, and tools to build prototypes and manage for effective prototyping.

Features

• A prototyping process with guidelines, templates, and worksheets;
• Overviews and step-by-step guides for 9 common prototyping techniques;
• An introduction with step-by-step guidelines to a variety of prototyping tools that do not require advanced artistic skills;
• Templates and other resources used in the book available on the Web for reuse;
• Clearly-explained concepts and guidelines;
• Full-color illustrations, and examples from a wide variety of prototyping processes, methods, and tools.
  
  Jonathan Arnowitz is a principal user experience designer at SAP Labs and is the co-editor-in-chief of Interactions Magazine. Most recently Jonathan was a senior user experience designer at Peoplesoft. He is a member of the SIGCHI executive committee, and was a founder of DUX, the first ever joint conference of ACM SIGCHI, ACM SIGGRAPH, AIGA Experience Design Group, and STC.
  
  Michael Arent is the manager of user experience design at SAP Labs, and has previously held positions at Peoplesoft, Inc, Adobe Systems, Inc, Sun Microsystems, and Apple Computer, Inc. He holds several U.S. patents.
  
  Nevin Berger is design director at Ziff Davis Media. Previously he was a senior interaction designer at Oracle Corporation and Peoplesoft, Inc., and has held creative director positions at ZDNet, World Savings, and OFOTO, Inc.

Table of Contents

0: Preface: Effective Prototyping, why this book?
1: Why Prototyping
2: The effective prototyping process
3: Verify prototype assumptions and requirements
4: Develop Task Flows and Scenarios
5: Define prototype content and fidelity
6: Determine Characteristics
7: Choose a Method
8: Choose a Prototyping Tool
9: Establish the design criteria
10: Create the Design
11: Review the Design: the internal review
12: Validate and iterate the prototype
13: Deploy the design
14: Card sorting
15: Wireframe prototyping
16: Storyboard prototyping
17: Paper prototyping
18: Digital interactive prototyping
19: Blank model prototyping
20: Video prototyping
21: Wizard of Oz prototyping
22: Coded prototyping
23: Prototyping with office suite applications
24: Prototyping with Visio
25: Prototyping with Acrobat
26: Prototyping with Photoshop