[IxDA Discuss] prototyping -- fidelity in more than just pixels?

[Fred Beecher]

On Nov 7, 2007 11:11 PM, Eric Scheid <eric.scheid at ironclad.net.au> wrote:

> On 8/11/07 11:08 AM, "Andrei Herasimchuk" <andrei at involutionstudios.com>
> wrote:
>
> > First of all, higher fidelity isn't just "almost always better," it
> > *is* always better. That's a key point, imho.
>
> In your prototypes, do you put as much attention in these other aspects as
> you do with making your prototypes "pixel perfect"? If you were
> prototyping
> a newspaper website, for example, would you update your prototype
> throughout
> the day such that the current news is presented (with all the potential
> distractions that implies), or do you use a content snapshot of old news,
> or
> do you use lorem ipsum?


Before I begin prototyping I develop the prototype test plan. This way, I
know exactly what details need to be in the prototype and which don't. For
example, I'm currently working on a prototype that has a mixture of "lorem
ipsum" (because the current site's content is mostly awful and no new
content has yet been developed) and reasonably faked (English) content that
matches information they're asked to look for in each task.

It's that last bit that's important... enough detail needs to be included in
a prototype for users to have confidence that they are done with the task.

This is the first time I've combined "lorem ipsum" with fake content
(largely due to insane time constraints... yet somehow I find the time to
ramble on here... heh), and I worry that the test might be too easy for
users... they might figure out, "oh, there's stuff in English on this page
that has latin all over it... this must be what I'm supposed to find." I
plan to mitigate that with well-placed probing questions, but we'll see how
it goes.

- Fred