Wireframing and Prototyping
- Toronto: Friday, August 13
- Copenhagen: Friday, October 22
Hoa Loranger
Kara Pernice
Full-Day Tutorial
Want to catch major usability problems before they become costly to fix? Wireframing and paper prototyping (also known as
low-fidelity prototyping) is a low-cost, rapid iterative design technique that offers one of the best and most
cost-effective methods for gaining design insight early in the design process.
Prototyping allows you to identify major usability problems before your company spends enormous amounts
of time, effort, and money developing and coding user interfaces.
In this tutorial, you’ll discover how to use paper prototyping to foster improved teamwork across
multi-disciplinary teams, and how it can save your company substantial time and money.
What You’ll Learn
In this session, you’ll learn:
- How low-fidelity prototypes can shorten development time
- Tips and tricks for creating paper prototypes quickly
- How prototypes can facilitate creativity and build consensus among team members
- How to effectively conduct studies using wireframes and prototypes
Course Outline
- The who, what, where, when, and why of prototyping
- Who should be involved in creating and testing prototypes?
- What are prototypes and what do they look like?
- Where and when in the design process should you use wireframes?
- Why does low-fidelity prototyping matter to your business, end users, and multi-disciplinary teams?
- Planning paper prototype studies
- Setting goals to balance business and user needs
- Defining user profiles and recruiting criteria
- Creating test plans and schedules
- Creating paper prototypes
- How to create prototypes
- Paper prototyping materials
- Tricks and tips for creating prototypes
- Conducting the study
- How to conduct paper prototyping studies
- Facilitation techniques
- Differences between testing with paper prototypes and real or live products
Format
This full-day tutorial combines lectures and exercises, and includes materials
for creating and testing design prototypes. Participants will gain hands-on experience with paper
prototyping techniques so they can apply the knowledge directly to their own design challenges.
Handouts
Copies of the presentation slides and a free copy of our
32-minute DVD video on paper prototyping
(a US$68 value)
Who Should Attend
This tutorial is aimed at Web and software developers, designers, project
managers, and other professionals who have basic usability testing skills, but have never created
or tested paper prototypes.
Attendees must have a general understanding of Web or software applications, because most of
the examples and exercises will be drawn from them. Participants should also be interested in
exploring the use of rapid design techniques.
Instructors
Hoa Loranger is a Director at Nielsen Norman Group and heads the San Diego office. Loranger has
consulted with many large, well-known companies in such areas as finance, customer support, intranets,
e-commerce, entertainment, and technology. She has conducted international usability research worldwide and has given
keynote presentations and tutorials on a wide range of topics, including user testing, paper prototyping, and fundamentals
of Web usability. She coauthored the book Prioritizing Web Usability
(New Riders Press) and has written reports on design for Flash-based
applications, investor relations,
“about us” pages,
B2B websites,
location finders, and
teens.
Before joining NN/g, she served as human factors lead for Intuit’s Consumer Tax and Small Business Division,
where her group was responsible for user-interaction and visual design for the TurboTax product line. At TRW
(now part of Northrop Grumman), she specialized in both hardware and software systems, including navigational
applications and computer configurations in military vehicles. Loranger earned an M.A. in human factors and applied
experimental psychology from California State University, Northridge, and a B.A. in psychology from University of California, Irvine.
Presenting in Toronto.
Kara Pernice is the Managing Director of Research at Nielsen Norman Group and heads the company’s East Coast operations.
She has led many of NN/g’s major intercontinental research studies, generated the resulting design guidelines, and coauthored
several reports, including
Designing Corporate Intranets,
Designing for Accessibility,
Designing for People Over the Age of 65, and
Designing Websites to Maximize Press Relations.
She is a leading authority on intranet usability and eyetracking usability ( The Wall Street Journal called her “an
intranet guru”). She judged the submissions for and coauthored NN/g’s
Government Intranets Report and its Intranet Design Annuals in
2001,
2002,
2003,
2005,
2006,
2007,
2008, and
2009.
She has also done extensive research in evaluating emotion and design, given presentations on a wide range of topics,
and worked with clients in various industries, including publishing, entertainment, technology, finance,
pharmaceuticals, and government. She has more than 15 years of experience in evaluating usability and has established
successful usability programs at Lotus Development, Iris Associates (an IBM subsidiary), and Interleaf. She chaired the
Usability Professionals’ Association 2000 and 2001 conferences, and served as 2002 conference advisor. She holds an
M.B.A. from Northeastern University and a B.A. from Simmons College.
Presenting in Copenhagen.
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