What is Paper Prototyping [Examples]

Paper Prototyping: The fast and easy way to design and refine user interface

GUI Widgets

Coming soon! This section will show examples of paper prototypes that illustrate GUI widgets such as checkboxes, text fields, and drop-down lists.

Case Studies

Each of the case studies below is described in more detail in chapter 2.

Type of Interface	Company: Product	Description
Software	The MathWorks: Control Point Selection Tool (used by scientists to align and study complex images)	The users' work was sophisticated, and the development team worried that their interface might need to be consistent with existing (and inferior) tools. Paper prototype testing showed the development team which features users needed, and why. The inconsistency? Not a problem - users recognized that the new interface was a distinct improvement. The team went from a blank slate to a ready-to-implement design in about 3 months. The cpselect tool shipped in April 2001 and has been well received by its customers - most of the feedback has been requests for small enhancements.
Web Application	Centra: Symposium (offers a live, "virtual classroom" environment for distance learning)	Back in 1996, the original design called for a simulated 3D environment. But paper prototype tests showed that the 3D functionality would actually interfere with the online learning experience. The functionality was dropped, thus shortening time to market by an estimated 6-12 months. The development team also discovered some of the social issues in online training that were crucial for the product's success. Several years later, the Symposium interface still reflects the lessons learned from those early paper prototypes.
E-commerce Web Site	Priceline.com (users submit a bid for a plane ticket along with a credit card - Priceline determines if any airlines will accept the bid)	Back in the mid-90s, e-commerce was just taking off. Would users understand this unique method of buying plane tickets? How could be they be convinced to trust their credit card to a yet-unknown web site? Was three days too long to wait for an answer? Paper prototyping showed the team that their initial design would have crashed and burned... but they corrected the problems before launching the site. They also discovered that users didn't need some of the hard-to-implement features they had originally planned.

There are several types of findings from paper prototype usability tests:
	Usability issues. All the things you typically find in usability testing - confusing concepts, poor terminology, layout problems, lack of feedback, etc.
	Missing (or misspecificed) functional requirements. Users often have needs that the development team isn't aware of, or the team may have a mistaken assumption about what functionality will satisfy a user requirement.
	Preference for one design alternative. Sometimes there are multiple ways to provide a function and they're equally easy to implement. But users may have a clear preference for one way over another.
	Priorities. No company has unlimited resources — paper prototyping can separate the gotta-haves from the nice-to-haves.
	Issues outside the user interface. A product is more than just a user interface. The brand and the company's reputation are important, as is the context in which the product will be used. Paper prototypes are often sufficiently realistic that they encourage test participants to extrapolate to real-world situations of use. Thus, they can uncover issues beyond the user interface.

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Morgan Kaufmann

There was an undercurrent of doubt about whether we were doing the right thing. Paper prototyping helped the company address these issues and change technical direction. Without it, these decisions would likely have taken 6-12 months longer. --Ronnie Thomson, Director of Engineering, Centra.