Ep 308| Paper Prototyping Skills for Designers

Foreign.

Thank you for staying tuning here in this podcast we are going to see what is paper prototyping. It's been very common that designers do a lot of prototypes in their day and they don't understand prototype is not just showing in the digital screens. Prototype is all about bringing the physical tangibility to the people. Even though you are making digital screens or physical product, this is still applicable. There are many aspects to do paper prototyping, okay? You don't have to always necessarily end up making in a paper. You can also try with the cardboards. You can also try with a thermocol. You can also try with whatever you have DIY across your home, okay? The major objective of doing paper prototype is to test your ideas quickly is to bring user centric approach towards that. You may be thinking this interaction is small, big, but unless until you bring to the user, you never know it is really going to make a big sense or not.

Okay?

So that is why paper prototyping is very vital. Being a designer and also many design studios who prominently intervene this method and keep it for their users and clients and everybody are getting huge results. Particularly design studios who do this kind of a paper paper prototyping are able to reduce their prototyping and implementation time up to 40%. 70% of the usability issues can be identified with early prototyping. Nielsen Norman Group says that. Okay, and also studios like idu, Frog, all these people are predominantly using it and also people who are testing it with the real time prototype and papers, they will be able to visualize the solutions much better and improve the product in the long run. If you are not able to do the prototype, it's very simple guys, you can able to just do it with whatever you have across you. You can use the paper scissor method to complete it.

Okay?

And also if you have a good budget in your projects, you can also do a real time mock up prototype so that you can bring the mobile phones or any other screens or interfaces to do it live with you, okay? That will bring even more closer to your user. But anyway, I told you two possibilities. Whatever is your budget accordingly you can try it out. The second advantage, what I wanted to tell you being doing a prototype is you become more creative, you become more hands on, your motor skills will really improve a lot and your creativity will grow up to really a crazy level.

Okay?

So the concept behind the mechanism behind doing this prototype is first of all you need to understand what is prototyping. See, a prototyping is done when the wireframes and the basic ideas is much clearer. People have to test it with the user with some kind of idea what they have.

Okay.

And this need not have to be always a perfect idea. Sometimes it could be a a little abstract idea as well. But make sure it is wireframed properly. And also you create some kind of a user flow diagram or something like that for the solution and then take it to the user before you make it as a final solution. Sometimes you're very close to a final solution. That's okay, you can test it out. But I would highly recommend you to first test it out with a low fidelity or medium fidelity or even high fidelity mockup.

Okay.

I mean a wireframe. And then you can take it up into a Mocapara prototype. Second, what are the key components of paper prototype? First, screens and frames Second, interactive elements. Third, annotation. You can have some individual interface also guys designed for a particular frames. You can also have some moving buttons, sliders, all these things. You can also have some notes explaining why this functionality is kept. So users behavior will be very different when they read that.

Okay?

Think about it, the benefits. I told you there is no big software dependency. There is user centric design approach. You are becoming more flexible and you are becoming more creative out of it. Okay, and what are the techniques to do it? See, you can do it in layered way. You can use sticky notes, you can use papers, you can use transparent sheet, you can use boxes, you can use cardboards. You can use any team, anything. And also you can do it with some of your teammates. You can collaborate with them. If your design studio is not using it, why don't you start using it now? Why don't you just keep it very simple and prioritize only the basic need in that wireframes and test it out with your team. Tell your one team to have another prototype and you also create one more prototype and you both have. You interact and see how it's working. Maybe you can able to paste a big interface in the head of a guy and then you can put it across 10 people in your design team. 10 interactions. Why don't you ask some random people to come and see? Can you able to make a sense out of these guys by by seeing this interface? See it becomes little fun and interesting and superb. Right? This is what is the real time studio working environment is. And a lot of people really don't experience it at their early stage of their career because they don't end up in the proper design studio. They end up in a consulting business design studios they end up in a consulting firms they do it a service job. Many times a product design studio will take this kind of an approach. Guys. Okay, so I request you if you want to really get an experience of all these things, please also try to apply jobs for the product design studio where these things are pretty much experienced. Okay, See guys, Physical prototyping boost creativity up to 60% Harvard Creativity Lab says teams using the paper prototyping complete projects 30 times faster. UX research report says and also it improves the memory retention. Think about it. Okay, I hope paper prototyping is much clearer for you in this podcast. I wanted you to go and claim the gift which is there in the podcast description and also join my upcoming webinar at 10 o' clock Sunday to learn about the six step formula how you can use to connect all the skills and learnings, whatever you're getting in this podcast into a 3x salary, whatever you currently have or maybe if you're a designer, how you can able to get your first design job in less than 90 days by applying my six step method formula. Okay, so register for that webinar and also take care of the gift which has been given to you guys and also subscribe my podcast for further notified for the episodes and give me a Best star rating if you find this useful in Apple and Spotify. Okay so take care. All the best. Bye bye.