Prototyping facilitates rapid iteration and fail-fast (and learn-fast) experimentation, and helps the whole product team push technical limits
Many job descriptions now list HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and front-end frameworks like Bootstrap, Foundation, and AngularJS as desirable skills for UX designers. This push for designers to have a better understanding of code stems from a growing recognition that experience design is a must-have for the creation of compelling, customer-centered products.
Most organizations look for hybrid coder-designers in the belief that hiring them will translate to a better experience for customers. After all, learning code allows designers to understand the true capabilities and constraints of a system. But what does it have to do with good design? And how should experience designers use this knowledge?
In Intuit’s TurboTax group, we’re using this nascent proficiency for a single purpose: to improve design through prototyping. We’re not the only tech company using prototyping to create great user experiences, but we’ve placed prototyping squarely in design while other organizations often lump it in with software development.
Showing and Telling
Prototyping is a powerful tool that enables designers to present their designs and see them in action, at speed. The payoff is that design modifications can happen sooner, before the product goes to developers or into production. Making changes at that stage may be more expensive, if not impossible.
The payoff is even greater with high-fidelity prototyping, which makes use of things like real user data, end-to-end prototyping frameworks and motion design for richer designs that can reduce the number of iterations needed and ultimately speed production. A good high-fidelity prototype can get people excited about your design in ways that a bare-bones prototype or PowerPoint presentation can’t touch. A show-and-tell approach works best—showing through a prototype and telling through storytelling. But it’s mostly showing.
Making it Real Makes a Difference
For one test concept for TurboTax, a designer created a beautiful prototype using OmniGraffle but used a fixed scenario based on dummy data with a single “happy” path through the experience. There were no hitches when we tested that concept; users gave mostly positive reviews and it seemed to work.
Then, using the exact same design, we introduced real user data into the test. Instead of mocked-up data, the testers saw their own actual financial information and had to answer questions about it. To our surprise, we got very different results—bad ones. Partway through the test, one participant even began to cry out of frustration. The very same test that had previously elicited such positive feedback was now confusing and overwhelming. The takeaway was clear: putting real user data into hi-fi prototypes generates far more meaningful feedback. We were able to pivot and test different variations before production was too far along.
Read more of Heather Daggett’s article on hi-fi prototyping at UX Magazine. Daggett is a senior prototyper who helped form the new role of prototyping at Intuit. Combining her background in computer science, web design, and human-computer interaction, she brings ideas to life through high-fidelity prototypes.