Do we really need prototyping software?
October 27, 2009In a blog post a few months back, Karol Zielinski puts forward the idea that we don’t need prototyping software.
It’s an interesting angle to take, and before we take a look at his arguments, it’s only fair to state that of course we don’t need prototyping software in the same way we don’t need a word processor or Visual Studio or whatever modern software we use on a daily basis. We could manage without, but it would be a much harder existence and what we’d accomplish in a day today would take weeks without our modern toolset.
I believe we should use the best tools we have available wherever possible, though Karol takes a bold stance when he says that:
‘the most important thing in creating web-based application is to create it as fast as it could be created; using the easiest and the cheapest possible methods and tools.
Looking at that statement, it’s certainly good to be responsive to changing requirements and so I can put no argument up against that. I also agree that using the easiest tools is never a bad idea. However, bringing cost into the equation might be a false economy.
For example, we could do all of our prototyping using html and javascript. It’s certainly cheap – free, in fact, as we could do it all with any text editor – and it’s not rocket science as html+javascript are pretty well understood and there are many books out there. However, it’s going to take a LOT longer than using a quality prototyping tool such as Axure and didn’t we just argue the case for responsive prototyping? In any case, your customer might not be prepared to wait and the cost of a dedicated and supported prototyping tool would quickly be recovered in cost savings and workflow efficiency.
Karol definitely favours wireframing, because it is ‘the most powerful, the cheapest, the fastest and the easiest method’. I disagree; its power is limited because its output cannot convey the look and feel of a finished product; it’s also static – your boss can’t interact with it, and so you lose the intrinsic value of a prototype as a promotional tool to gain support and increase awareness.
In fact, wireframing is in many ways one of the worst approaches to take if your intended design is interactive – it’s difficult to visualise the interaction and the flows through the design.
Creating an interactive prototype might well be somewhat more complicated to achieve than simple wireframing, but I argue that it is a far more powerful technique and justifies that extra effort.
What do you think?
