Brian Ohs just pointed me at this fine article on using old school pen and paper to sketch out user interface ideas instead of more heavyweight options like sets of (static) HTML pages. This issue came up in my Software Engineering course last semester, with some groups going the HTML route and some doing some very nice pen and paper prototyping.
One of the most compelling advantages of paper prototyping is the inclusiveness – pretty much anyone can do it or participate in the process. It was clear from my students’ experience, though, is that not all people’s drafting skills were created equally. Consequently, it wasn’t really equally inclusive for all. That said, I suspect that a well organized collection of prototyping tools would make it possible for just about anyone to at least participate in the process. I wonder if there’s a patterns language for interfaces that could be translated into some standard paper prototyping components?
Some of the groups from my course generated some very cool paper prototypes; the sketch above is from a prototype by Jason Hutchison and Andy Korth.
