Rapid Digital Prototyping

Everybody who is into interface design, Rapid Paper Prototyping is an old hat! But ever considered doing screen design on screen?

With pidoco’s web-based interface design software, screen designers and web developers can save valuable time, easily integrate other stakeholders and build better interfaces for the internet.

Rapid Paper Prototyping has already been in the know for a while to get a web-project started. Rapid Paper Prototyping is about sketching ideas with pen an paper to be shared and iterated within the team. This prototype will then be put through a refinement process by implementing feedback from colleagues or even clients. This paper-built prototype will at last act as a rough guide for the whole project – from beginning to the end (but is there a real end?). Some web designers even use these sketches for performing usability tests. Revealing usability issues in the prototyping phase can save a lot of time, since later alterations in the so called ‘finished’ web application are minimized.

Anyway, there are problems with Rapid Paper Prototyping.  Paper prototypes are only scanned to add to the project documentation and also difficult to collaborate on over different locations. Transforming paper prototypes into clickable wireframes for testing use cases is also a time consuming task as we all know!

That is why many interface designers create their sketches directly in MS PowerPoint or other diagramming tools and have them send to the relevant sources. True, that way one can share the data more effectively but it is not really more dynamic than copying a piece of paper handing it to the team. The Visio-type static wireframes still do not show the real capabilities for test user excitement:  links, dynamic menus and work-flows etc. cannot be reproduced effectively and need to be explained individually in long paragraphs. Again, more time and effort has to be invested to get the message across.

pidoco° has spotted this problem and made it their mission to tackle it by providing a easy web-based interface design software.