User Experience 2008
Chicago
Nov 2-7		 Amsterdam
Nov 16-21

Rapid Iterative Design

  • Chicago: Thursday, November 6
  • Amsterdam: Thursday, November 20

Hoa Loranger
Full-Day Tutorial

Want to catch major usability problems before they become costly to fix? 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.

Paper 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 paper prototypes can facilitate creativity and build consensus among team members
  • How to effectively conduct studies using paper prototypes

Course Outline

  • The who, what, where, when, why of paper prototyping
    • Who should be involved in creating and testing prototypes?
    • What are paper prototypes and what do they look like?
    • Where and when in the design process should paper prototyping be conducted?
    • Why does paper 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 prototype 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

photo of Hoa Loranger Hoa Loranger is a User Experience Specialist at Nielsen Norman Group and heads the San Diego office. Loranger has consulted with many large, well-known companies in such industries 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.