Entries tagged with: prototyping...

Sketching, prototyping, and Balsamiq Mockups

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Although it is a few years old, Sketching User Experiences by Bill Buxton is one of the best books I've ever read describing the user experience design process. In the book, Buxton basically argues that UI/UX designers everywhere are omitting one of the most basic and fundamental steps in the design process: Sketching. Many software professionals use the terms "sketch", "prototype", and "storyboard" interchangeably, when in fact they are very different. Sketches are meant to be cheap, plentiful, and ambiguous. Sketches should raise questions - you need to be able to get more out of a sketch than what you've put in. Too often, designers commit themselves to a design that was never measured against alternatives. Designers cling to early ideas, and before long, they've created elaborate power point presentations, pixel-perfect Photoshop mockups, and GUI specification documents of the wrong design. Buxton contends this happens because designers aren't prolific enough in their sketching, but also because managers, developers, and customers like to see "finished" designs - reinforcing the notion that higher fidelity designs are *better* designs. "Sketches" or "hand-drawn" artifacts don't convey the warm and fuzzy feelings of a finished design; consequently, they are given less importance as deliverables.

Below is a (long but good) video of Buxton explaining how Sketching relates to the User Experience Design process: