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Loading ...Prototyping on the cheap - Part I
By day, Sean Howard works as a Director of Strategy and Innovation at Lift Communications, a brand experience studio in Toronto, Canada. By night, he goes by the name “Craphammer” - a lone blogger vigilante looking to set the marketing world straight. Sean was one of the commenters on our 100th post and we thought we’d extend an invitation to guest post here on Experience Matters. To our delight, Sean agreed to do so and in the process will be adding a couple of posts to our melting pot of voices. But enough about us, let’s hear what Sean, AKA “The Craphammer,” has to say:
I recently wrote an article discussing prototyping as an important part of research for identifying latent needs. I’ve taken a rather wide view and defined “prototype” as “a preliminary model of something.”
There are many stages in a development (and research) process where I believe prototypes are highly effective and powerful parts of our arsenal. However, more than one person has brought up the costs associated with building prototypes and that this cost can preclude their use.
I wonder about this. Are prototypes really that expensive? Or rather, do they have to be?
This is part one of an article where I present a number of ways to implement powerful prototyping methods on-the-cheap.
Lulu book, anyone?
Here is a prototype cookbook complete with photos, recipes, cover and more. Purchase a few copies for $4.99 and have them ready at the next meeting with the client. Everyone actually leaves with a picture of what the future could look like. What an amazing way to create a future artifact.
Rather than focusing on prototyping the device or service directly, we can prototype a manual, quick start guide or even a magazine article about the product. Clients, stakeholders and even audience members can then use this to envision and grasp the final product without a prototype having ever been built.
Paper prototypes
The artifacts we create to denote page functionality, content and structure are not well understood by our clients. People nod their heads, request changes and even sign off on them, but I am finding more and more that there is a lack of real understanding on how these devices impact and inform the final website.
Mario Vellandi (of the beautifully named Melodies In Marketing) likes to move beyond standard paper wireframes into the realm of storyboards. “They can start out as simple pen/pencil sketches with 2 screens per page on an 8.5 x 11,” and grow from there.
Mario counsels that we “only detail what’s necessary and asked for. Sketch everything else. Dashed-stroke rectangles could represent animation areas, banners, and other high detail stuff.” This keeps the costs down and keeps the focus off “spec work” and on allowing his audience to ‘imagine’ the details between the screens/boards.
Using comics
Rebekah Sedaca from boxesandarrows presents a wonderful introduction to using comics for effectively “communicating difficult concepts to diverse audiences.” I love how she breaks down the steps involved and makes it pertinent to portraying user experiences. It is presented in a case study format for a project she worked on.
Rebekah uses professionally illustrated storyboards, and the time and cost of this method is likely a bit higher than can be warranted in every case. Using inexpensive desktop tools like Comic Life ($25 US) and any available digital camera, it is possible to create an effective storyboard/comic for less than I spend a week on soy lattes.
Sun has even developed a site of free resources to assist you in creating comics for creating better product designs, including characters, scenes, examples and more.
YouTube scenarios
Video has become democratized. Just about anyone can shoot, edit and upload a YouTube video. And with Flip Video devices, we can now spend around $100 and have a camera that shoots 640×480 video at 30 frames per second.
Here is a scenario built using down-to-earth video from a handheld camcorder and some mocked-up ticket machines. The goal appears to be about allowing people to envision what an above ground light rail would do for Los Angeles. I assume they are riding a light rail from another area and pretending it is in Los Angeles.
More to come
Here ends part one. In part two, we will look at reenactments, do-it-yourself engineering and interactive prototyping tools.
For those of us with no drawing skills (and I mean “none”), prototyping with video or with something like Comic Life can be a blessing.
And while I agree with prototyping (in particular for resolving design and narrative issues), they also have a powerful benefit in the selling process. Rather than seeing them as a cost, perhaps we should view them as an investment in the sales process.
Hey Gavin,
Great comment and point. I focused pretty hard on their involvement in the design process but agree they are quite powerful for selling our ideas. Some might argue this is also part of the design process but I will leave it to the process geeks to argue out.
I would love to see prototyping as an investment in an idea. My goal was to identify some creative ways by which we could limit the perceived costs and thus add this to any projects arsenal…
Smart stuff Sean.
I agree that clients only pretend to understand wireframes. Or even flats.
There’s always that “oh this is what you meant” moment.
What’s funny is that traditional “above the line” agencies use many of these techniques to sell TV spots: storyboards, rough animatics (crude animation with non-professional VO) and “filmatics” (similar, but with stock footage.)
What’s great about using them in this space is that they really do offer explanation of what the “thing” is– in TV, they’re poor imitations of a TV spot that is more easily imagined. Here, it’s bringing something to life.
Have you ever checked out CommonCraft? I fell in love with them when I watched their explanation of Twitter: http://www.commoncraft.com/Twitter which is so nicely done. I bet they’d be great at prototypes.
PS: I think you and I may be the only two people who ever use ComicLife (I use it to make comics with my kids - it’s a great program.)
Now that ComicLife is available for PC I am going to check it out. Does look cool!
I think Alan (hmmm don’t I know you from somewhere) has a good point — to go in front of clients, prototypes need to be close approximations. Otherwise you leave yourself open to setting false expectations.
Google SketchUp’s another highly useful tool, beloved of the Make magazine crowd - 3-D visualization software that you don’t have to know CAD to use, and that’s intuitive enough to invite play.
Free to download; there’s also a pro version that lets you output to a pile of additional data formats. Check out the case studies.
http://sketchup.google.com/
@Alan: I LOVE the Common Craft videos! They’ve become the only method I use to explain to clients what RSS, Twitter and a Wiki is.
@Gavin: Agreed. I’d only add that it likely depends on the stage of the idea. If it’s early, it might work better if the prototype is a bit malleable (changeable)…
@Eli: Great point on SketchUp! The way it can stylize anything you build to look like an artists rendering is really quite amazing.
I think rapid prototyping works best when it’s quick and dirty, like it does with game design prototyping: http://tinyurl.com/6lbxzw
What a wonderful link, Ross. Thank you!
I used to run 24 hour challenges where the idea was to fail. To set a task to build something that could not be done, or at least not well. It was about trying new roles in a team, stretching and learning to be okay with failure. We learned so much when we allowed ourselves to not succeed, to the point that every one of them was a success.