The Value of Effective Prototyping

Getting the correct workflow for your agency is a complex and non-trivial task. We are constantly trying to streamline the way we work, to improve on our processes and establish ways in which we can produce our work in the most effective and satisfactory manner, both for ourselves and our clients. Dealing with projects both small and large begs so many questions about what the correct ways are to roll it out, about what would be cost-effective for the agency as well as our clients, and end up making everybody happy. One of the biggest areas of trouble during any project is when there is a breakdown of communication of some sorts. This can happen very easily between the agency and the client, but very often is prevalent internally as well. The creation of a web site involves many players and thus successful communication between all involved is critical to the success of the job. Internally, project managers need to communicate with the production team, and the production team itself needs to have a clear avenue of communication and understanding with the various team members. If, at some point, someone fails to understand clearly how they are supposed to design or develop something, there can often be quite serious repercussions, considering the time it takes to fix mistakes is usually the longest. So I want to briefly put some thoughts down on why I find prototyping to be a valuable part of a project’s lifecycle.

Planning out a project properly is an essential aspect to its success. This can involve as simple things as basic sketches, through proper wireframing, to comprehensive modelling and documentation. However, if communication has broken down at some point, then one might spend a lot of time planning and documenting an incorrect job. Additionally, comprehensive documentation and planning can take up a lot of time of a project before anyone, especially the client, has even seen anything. Once this is done, the documentation might be put up for review, either internally or to the client, and if issues come up, the ripple effect can be substantial.Quinlan talks about a project he worked on where, as “the project progressed and I saw the size of the document balloon from 50 pages to more than 200 pages, I had the realization that this document would never be read by ANYONE from beginning to end. The business owners who were responsible for ensuring that the requirements fit their actual business needs were completely overwhelmed by the document’s size and complexity. Six months later the business users were given their shiny new software and they were disappointed that the software didn’t match their expectations.” Proper documentation like this is no doubt still preferable to no planning and producing a product that is unsatisfactory which then has to be mended in order to satisfy the business needs, ending up consuming a lot of your budget and creating a general state of unhappiness in and between the people involved. But there is a way to streamline the process even more during the planning and initial development phases, and this involves the effective use of prototyping.

Prototyping really comes into life when you are developing RIAs, as wireframing, simple planning, and other forms of documentation rarely captures the feel of what you are developing. With complicated interfaces that include a lot of animations and conceptual aspects to deliver the message of the brand, static documentation is almost always ineffective in providing a clear understanding of what the project will be like when it is completed. And this is where communication starts to break down. But, as Staley mentions in his article ‘Planning for RIA success’, “a key consideration is that a prototype can help establish expectations on design, functionality, and the resulting requirements of an application. This is particularly relevant to RIAs, because in many cases, the team will be venturing into unfamiliar terrain. Because of this uncertainty, traditional software development project techniques can be difficult to apply. A certain amount of discovery is required in the RIA process. Put another way, user experience design is of particular importance in an RIA, and it is often difficult to predict the outcome of an iterative design process.” In order to give everyone a sense of what you are creating, it is much easier and clearer when you can actually show them what you have in mind.

It is important to strike a good balance when doing this, as you wouldn’t want to create something twice, so prototyping should be a quick process meant to illustrate your point, hence the term rapid-prototyping. When you have something in mind for a particular project it can often save a lot of time and trouble if you are able to show the relevant parties something early on. This will help project managers, designers and developers work together more closely and effectively, provide clients with the means to understand what you are proposing (rather than a stale presentation filled with conceptual discussions on the merits of a fade, transition, or user experience), as well as catching usability issues early on. As discussed on A List Apart, “Prototypes can help you sell a decision that is fundamentally or radically different from the client’s current solution or application. The traditional approach is to create a compelling story and a riveting PowerPoint presentation, and spend a day arguing for the wisdom of your approach. Instead, sit a stakeholder down in front of a working prototype and show him or her why your approach is compelling.”

Once you have created a prototype of some aspect of your project, it is always easy to spot the areas which don’t work, and identify the things that need to be changed or improved upon. Very importantly as well, once you have worked out where your prototype works and where it doesn’t, creating proper planning documentation and rolling out the final product takes a very short amount of time, and is usually spot on in terms of the business requirements. In this way, effective use of prototyping manages to clear up the avenues of communication, as management can quickly establish whether production has understood their tasks and clients can quickly see whether the agency has understood the brief. If not, adapting the prototype is not as serious a matter as rewriting your comprehensive set of documentation or redeveloping major aspects of a site where the effects of a simple problem can undermine the rest of your project to such a large extent that it ends up destroying your budget, team morale and client agency relationships.

Ideas in a creative environment are often very conceptual, and one person’s idea might be completely different to that of another’s. In turn, clients have particular visions for their products, project managers have their own, creative directors have theirs, and the production team have their own. These ideas aren’t always easy to put down on paper, but with the proper use of prototyping, those ideas can be married much more effectively and the overall success of a project is much more certain. Making good use of prototypes during the development of your project opens up communication and helps to ensure the success of your project.

New video production from the Stonewall+ studio

Stonewall+ recently completed a video production project for Global Vision to showcase Adora, their next generation relationship marketing software. The project filmed 4 consumers who were venting about irrelevant and incorrectly targeted messages they received. The Adora application then captured unique demographic and psychographic information about each of them, building up an accurate profile of their interests, customer status and appropriate communication channels.

Our aim was to create an “application HUD (Heads Up Display)”  as if the Adora software is constantly aware of the keywords it needs to capture to be able to manage the customer communication correctly in the future. We brainstormed and visualised the individual character’s iconography and style guide, and identified the important keywords the Adora software needed to capture. Once we had the scene layed out with thumbnail previews, they were mocked up using Illustrator & Photoshop. We then pulled the designs apart in After Effects  and animated each of the elements according to the individual emotion & style of animation. Using a variety of overlaying post production effects and animation techniques, we managed to create a slick and polished final product.