Starting right, with prototypes
The recent years have seen an increased interest in agile and lean methods, where prototyping is a major part of the process. Thought-leaders in these areas have talked about how prototypes speed up the discovery, development and deployment processes, and lead to more successful outcomes.
Instead of focusing on the well-discussed fail fast/learn fast paradigm, this talk will cover how teams can use prototypes to discover deeply-hidden, cross-cutting concerns early on in the process without blowing up the project schedule and resources.
We will be talking about why prototyping should be a core, cross-functional activity in the team especially in the early phases of a project. We will cover how to use limited time and resources to make brilliant prototypes, how prototypes can go beyond gray boxy screens, and how project teams can successfully disperse the success of good prototypes across the entire project.
The talk is intended for all practitioners. If you are new to design practice, you can see how prototypes can be used to start a project in the right direction. If your team is already using prototypes, you may improve your prototyping process by adapting our principles into your workflow.
Resources
- Sketching User Experiences, Bill Buxton
- Prototyping, Todd Zaki Warfel
- Lean UX, Jeff Gothelf, Josh Seiden