Assignments > Lab 5. "Paper" Prototyping with Balsamiq
Today we will be practicing “Paper” prototyping techniques (your team assignment for the week). Please watch this video on Paper Prototyping by the Nielsen Norman Group (30 minutes). This video provides a lot of practical advice for how to design a paper prototype and test it with users, which will be very helpful in preparation for P3. I have also linked to a skimmable article with similar tips and content (by Babich). Image by Csaba Házi.
Your tasks:
As a Class
Please register for Balsamiq using the course license, located on Canvas (scroll to #5). When you’re done, we’ll walk though, as a group, how you use the software to mock something up.
In Teams
- Room 1: YouTube Social (Luke, et al.)
- Room 2: Observing Court Proceedings (Justin, et al.)
- Room 3: Productive Online Discussions (Harkirat)
- Room 4: Clustering & Understanding Clinical Features (Alex, et al.)
- Room 5: Image Annotation & Model Explanability (Igor, et al.)
- Room 6: Left Ventricular Assist Device Data Visualization (Ramsey)
Break up into your teams and devise a plan (for P3). Although you are still in the process of doing user research, you can start talking about the tasks and interactions (while being open to new insights / ideas that come from your interviews / contextual inquiries). Discuss the following:
- Which parts of your system are the most innovative, open-ended, and/or risky? You will prioritize testing these parts of your system first.
- Who are the users for this interaction?
- How can you ground this part of your interface in a concrete set of task scenarios?
- Will you be designing for Desktop, mobile, or both? You may want to stick with one context for your project. Up to you.
- What should the screens look like? I recommend that each person on your team prototype several versions of the interaction – get creative.
- How will you recruit users to test your prototype?
What to aim for by the end of today’s lab
By the end of the lab, you should have a sense of how to use the prototyping software, and a general sense of the tasks you will be prioritizing, screens that you will be prototyping, and how you might find users to help you test.
Slides
Readings
- Nielsen Norman Group. Paper Prototyping.