[IxDA Discuss] Rapid Prototyping Tools

[Jeff Axup]

Just to stir things up a bit, I think it's intriguing that the original
question was about paper prototyping and nearly all the answers have been
about medium-high fidelity prototyping tools. I tend to find that the
software industry as a whole has a tendency to jump to high-fidelity too
quickly which reduces design flexibility and discourages innovation. Paper
(real paper/foam/cardboard) is a great stage to stay at as long as you're
not getting slowed down significantly by the medium.

the best paper prototyping tool is a pencil and paper or a whiteboard,
paired with a digital camera. i use whiteboards constantly. take a
high-resolution photo of it and send it as an attachment over e-mail. if
you're doing remote usability testing, then that's another issue entirely.
The photographed wireframe/prototype is really basic, and that's part of why
it works well and works very rapidly. Nearly all of the higher-fidelity
tools bring restrictions (e.g. placement, excessive detail, pre-made
widgets, etc.) that can greatly restrict early design processes.

As for medium/high fidelity tools, I use Smartdraw (smartdraw.com) which has
linking capabilities and seems to have a much more intuitive and
task-oriented interface than Visio.

Also, just had a thought that one of the reasons whiteboards are so good is
that usually designs drawn on them are both created AND visible by groups.
They also hang in public places. Good design seldom happens from one person.
Having a design space easily seen and edited by many stakeholders is part of
good early design conceptualization.

Cheers,
Jeff

____________________________________________________________________________
Jeff Axup      Ph.D. Candidate - University of Queensland, Brisbane,
Australia
                   Principal Consultant, Mobile Community Design Consulting

Research:    Mobile Group Research Methods, Social Networks, Group Usability
E-mail:        axup <at> userdesign.com
Blog:           http://mobilecommunitydesign.com
Moblog:       http://memeaddict.blogspot.com
Academic:   http://www.infenv.itee.uq.edu.au
____________________________________________________________________________

On 1/25/07, Ron Vutpakdi <rvutpakdi at entouch.net> wrote:
>
> Kiesel, Jeffrey (User Experience) wrote:
> > I've seen canvas mentioned a few times on here.  What is it??
> >
> Canvas is a jack of all trades graphics application from ACD Systems
> which acquired the original publisher, Deneba Software  (www.deneba.com
> still works).
>
> Canvas is primarily a technical illustration package (vector graphics)
> that has good text support, good bitmap graphic editing support
> (including limited support for Photoshop plugins), and some basic page
> layout capabilities.  A combination of a good part of Illustrator, some
> Photoshop, a bit of InDesign thrown and a few Canvas tools thrown mixed
> together in a seamless package.  Very good import and export
> capabilities as well.
>
> I do most of my design work in Canvas, primarily creating clickable PDF
> design specs at the wireframe, photo-realistic level, or somewhere in
> between.  Particularly helpful capabilities include multi-layer support
> at the master page and the individual page level, the guides for
> alignment, as well as the ability to create hyperlinks out of text and
> graphics objects.
>
> Canvas runs about $350 for the general package (and more for the GIS or
> the scientific imaging versions).  Available for Windows and Mac OS X.
>
> Canvas does have its quirks, and ACD Systems seems to be clueless about
> what a gem of an app that they have. Still, I love Canvas since it suits
> what I do so well.
>
> Ron
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