Prototyping. Just do it.

Every designer will tell you to prototype. Although, there are some designers who go one step further. Paper prototyping. But why?

Are they just being fickle?

M Cobanli, the founder of OMC Design Studios, said; “Great design is the iteration of good design” in an article by the Interaction Design Foundation titled “Design iteration brings powerful results. So, do it again designer!”

The article continues: 

[…] “Why? It’s because it is almost always cheaper and easier to create a prototype to test than it is to develop a system or product and then amend that based on user feedback. There are a huge number of tools on the market that allow you to create interactive prototypes for web and software applications and most of these are low cost to adopt” […]

So prototyping is cheap and efficient? But they are talking about digital prototyping. What about those paper fans?

Mariyamelshrieff explores the paper plane in her article titled Case Study: The Importance of Paper Prototyping. Mariyamelshrieff writes “a pencil and paper are all you need to come up with the next big solution”.  

Mariyamelshrieff continues:

[…] “We conducted two of these design studios. My team wanted to figure everything from the solution from the first design studio. In the second design studio, we spent it in refining the layout of the sketch we choose to move forward with rather than testing it on a paper-prototype. Recalling back, I think that’s where we went wrong, and I wish I advocated more for this rather than some design”.

So trying to save time by skipping straight to digital prototypes cost Mariyamelshrieff some valuable time during her project. By utilizing paper prototyping methods, a team can ideate their design more efficiently. So how do you do it?
“If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a prototype is worth a thousand meetings” writes Rikke Friis Dam & Yu siang Teo in their article titled Design Thinking: Get Started with Prototyping

Rikke Friis Dam & Yu siang Teo continue:

[…] “Many of us may recall the art of prototyping from our early childhood where we created mock-ups of real-world objects with the simplest of materials such as paper, card, and modelling clay or just about anything else we could get our hands on. There is not much difference between these types of prototypes and the early rough prototypes we may develop at the earlier phases of testing out ideas”. […]

No matter how you start, the important thing is to just do it. The benefits of prototyping, particularly with paper, are both financial and cognitive. Prototyping allows you to boost your design’s potential by fully exploring your solution. 

Tags: UX, UI, Information design, design thinking, design, designer, Mariyamelshrieff, Rikke Friis Dam & Yu siang Teo, Interaction Design Foundation