Wireframing and Prototyping
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.
Instructor
Kara Pernice is the Managing Director 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 MBA from Northeastern University and a BA from Simmons College.
Presenting in Miami and New York.
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