[IxDA Discuss] Methods for prototyping thick applications

[Matthew Attaway]

Hello all,

I'm in the process of designing my first major "thick" application( yay! ),
and have run into something of a brick wall in figuring out how to prototype
it. It's a fairly smart client that is less for creating content and more
for managing it, with a database backend. I'm comfortable with paper
prototypes, but I know at some point I'm going to need to go beyond that.

The problem is I don't know how far beyond paper prototypes I need to go. If
I were doing game design I'd pop into Visual Studio and start coding a rough
version, but I've found that desktop GUIs are much more time consuming to
hack together. The three options I'm considering right now are:

1) PowerPoint prototype - seems only a step above paper, it may be even less
flexible, but you can email it
2) ActionScript or Javascript prototype - more flexible than PowerPoint,
won't have live data, somewhat time intensive
3) C# or C++ "ugly" GUI - time intensive but very flexible, can have live
data

I'm afraid I'm jumping straight to coding because that is one of my main
skill sets. However I'm also worried a PowerPoint prototype will have an
"uncanny valley" effect where it will look like a GUI and act like a slide
show. There are a lot of different paths the user can explore in the client,
and I've seen PowerPoint prototypes blow up in the face of a curious user. (
What does this button do? Nothing? What a terrible GUI! )

 Is there another option I'm missing? Are any of these a huge mistake? I
sense an "It Depends(tm)" coming, but any advice would be greatly
appreciated.

Cheers,
Matt