Rapid Digital Prototyping. Part I

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

With pidoco’s web-based prototyping software, interaction designers and web developers can save valuable time, enhance the creative process and build better interfaces for the internet.
Rapid Paper Prototyping has already been established as THE way to get a GUI started. The basic concepts of the layout will be put on paper and  shared and iterated within the team. This prototype will then go through an iterative design process by implementing feedback from different stake holders. This paper screen will at last act as a rough guide for the whole project – from start to finish. Some screen-designers even use these paper sketches for running usability tests. Revealing usability issues in an early stage of development can save a lot of time, since later alterations in the so called ‘finished’ web project are minimized.

Anyway, there are several drawbacks to Rapid Paper Prototyping.  Paper prototypes are difficult to add to the document servers and also difficult to share between team-members. Transforming paper sketches into interactive, digital documents for getting the grip on how workflows are reproduced in the design is also a time consuming task as we all know!

That is why many companies create their prototypes directly in MS PowerPoint or InDesign and have them distributed to the relevant sources. True, that way one can share the data more effectively but it is not really more interactive than copying a piece of paper handing it to the team. The digital sketches still do not show the real capabilities for test user excitement:  links, dynamic menus and buttons etc. cannot be reproduced effectively and need to be explained individually in long specs. Again, more time and effort has to be invested to get the message across.

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

Wireframing and Real-time Collaboration

The pidoco° wireframe software consists of three main components which complement each other perfectly. They speed up the interface design process and optimize the general workflow in all stages of interactive web design.

Interactive wireframes are quickly sketched with the Prototype Creator (just by drag&drop) and can later easily be shared and reviewed by colleagues, test users or clients. If there is need for even more in-depth feedback on individual aspects of the concept wireframes, just use the digital prototypes to perform a easy to set up remote usability test where moderator and test user are connected remotely by a shared screen and an integrated phone. All modules are aimed to increase productivity of the interface design process and ease communication within the team.