How To Prototype And Influence People
One of the points I make in So You Want To Be A Designer is that the hardest part of software isn’t the process of creating software, it’s changing culture and influencing organizations. One of the strongest tools we have our repertoire in convincing others is prototyping and video: turning ideas into high-bandwidth communication artifacts. The goal of a prototype is to sketch an idea and to inspire participation: you are creating a narrative.
To put it another way, the value of an idea is zero unless it can be communicated. Below is the video of my talk on How To Prototype And Influence People. Not only that, but the video also includes a demonstration of live rapid prototyping! Now is your chance to see me code and debug in front of seventy-five people. It’s like pair programming with an entire room.
For those who do not want to sit through the 30-minutes romp and my rapid prototyping, here are the principals of prototyping that I explain fully in talk:
- Your first try will be wrong. Budget and design for it.
- Aim to finish a usable artifact in a day. This helps you focus and scope.
- You are making a touchable sketch. Do not fill in all the lines.
- You are iterating your solution as well as your understanding of the problem.
- Treat your code as throw-away, but be ready to refactor.
- Borrow liberally
- Tell a story with your prototype. It isn’t just a set of features.
The Rapid Prototype: A Zooming Twitter Streamer
The Slides
RT @aza How To Prototype And Influence People | Follow @aza on Twitter | All blog posts
Flavio
I beg to differ. For example, the endemic performance problems of the Mozilla platform tell us how it is hard to create quality code. That said, I consider UI design as important, but not more, than writing code.
Michel Jansen
I don’t think the point is that implementation is unimportant; rather that no amount of quality code, however good it may be, can compensate for poor design.
Also, design is more than just pretty colours and sprinkles on top; it is even more than just the UI. It is about figuring out what the end result should be like (conceptually, functionally, even emotionally – that’s where the sprinkles come in).
Bad implementation can ruin a well-designed product/service/thing, but you can rewrite crappy code. It is much harder to make radical changes to the design without upsetting the people who already work with the “old” way :)
That said, I certainly agree that quality code is important, but not more than getting the design right in the first place ;)
Flavio
Yes, I slightly missed the point. However, I think this whole discussion is flawed by the popular idea that first you design then you implement. This is deeply wrong.
There’s no implementation in software, it’s all design. Design at all levels, from the general idea to memory allocation. Even the way you handle errors must be designed. As I read once somewhere, “the implementors of software are not humans but perfect machines”. Computers implement our code. And code is the design. Sure you can “design the design” at a higher levels. Every step of the software creation process is design.
Flavio
Here’s the article I was referring to. http://www.osnews.com/story/22135/The_Problem_with_Design_and_Implementation
A really good read.
Michel Jansen
Philosophical ;) I totally agree. Design is far too often seen as separate from the end result, either as a monolithic blueprint up front or as an afterthought to “make it pretty”. It should be neither. Design is an integral part of the end result. However, as you aptly state, there are multiple areas or levels of abstraction where one can think about design (concept, interaction, graphics, system architecture, materials, network etc. – even business). There is generally a “right time” to start worrying about each of these and people generally tend to reason from one of these perspectives and that’s where the trouble starts.
If you just start coding on a system with a well-designed architecture, but neglect the conceptual and interaction aspects, you will build a beautifully engineered system that is useless; the same goes for a good concept with poor execution, but that is generally easier to “fix”.
I really like the link you shared; I always find myself falling into the gap between the two (I have a B.Sc. in Computer Science and am working towards a M.Sc. in Human Computer Interaction).
Flavio
Glad you liked the article and that we share a lot of common ideas. Bye!
farnoux
It was also said: “Be Dramatic”
;)
lmarcetic
-_-
Axel Hecht
Hey Aza, inspiring as always.
I still wonder how to learn to dump ones brain into messaging, though. I might dare to pick your brain for feedback on my next one.
Btw, your twitter streamer is broken right now, you’re using ‘results’ once too often, it seems.
László Monda
Thanks for putting this online, very interesting!
As for the usability of the layout of this post: putting the presentation just below the video would be better I think because I could see both of them on the same screen and page the persentation whenever I want.
Carl
I was flashed by the truth your slides contain! Thanks a lot – I got a totally new perspective on how ideas have to be launched and handled!
Joao Menezes
Nice keynote. Wish I were able to go to the session, but I caught it online now so I’m up-to-date.
For me, being a Graphics and Interaction designer, prototyping is really the most powerful tool we have to sell our ideas. And selling here is about making other people trust on your work and see it as a tangible way of having innovation and a better user experience.
I’d complement the importance of having as many alternatives as possible during the mock-up phase, so you can manage the time available for prototyping more efficiently.
Thanks for sharing this material, Aza.
Cheers
ph0rque
Anyone know where the futuristic camper thing is from? That thing looks *awesome*.
Bruce Lueckenhoff
Not to nitpick but please fix a couple of distracting typos:
> … here are the principals of prototyping that I explain > fully in talk
s/principals/principles/
s/talk/the talk/
Schalk Neethling
I have been meaning to read this for the longest time and finally did. What an awesome and inspiring article.
Thanks Aza
Andrew
Hi, it’s offtopic, but it’s possible to view post timestamps in this blog? It’s strange, but I can’t find them.
Achal
I was looking for just that. I don’t know about you, but I just wanted to see if this blog were still active or not.
At any rate, I couldn’t find time stamps, but I did find a way to see when blog posts were created: Just subscribe to the RSS feed. Firefox lets you do that pretty easily [the RSS button in the menu bar.. if it's not there, right click somewhere in the menu bar, click customize and find the RSS button]. Hope that helps.
Andrew
Thanks, probably I would not able to come to this idea myself.
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Interesting video, I like very much this kind of things. To bad that I could not be there.
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So good post.turning ideas into high-bandwidth communication artifacts. The goal of a prototype is to sketch an idea and to inspire participation: you are creating a narrative.
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dawn
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That said, I consider UI design as important, but not more, than writing code.
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One of the strongest tools we feature our accumulation in convincing others is prototyping and recording: motion ideas into high-bandwidth communication artifacts.
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Yes, I slightly missed the point. However, I think this whole discussion is flawed by the popular idea that first you design then you implement. This is deeply wrong.
There’s no implementation in software, it’s all design. Design at all levels, from the general idea to memory allocation. Even the way you handle errors must be designed. As I read once somewhere, “the implementors of software are not humans but perfect machines”. Computers implement our code. And code is the design. Sure you can “design the design” at a higher levels. Every step of the software creation process is design.
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Yes, I slightly missed the point. However, I think this whole discussion is flawed by the popular idea that first you design then you implement. This is deeply wrong.
There’s no implementation in software, it’s all design. Design at all levels, from the general idea to memory allocation. Even the way you handle errors must be designed. As I read once somewhere, “the implementors of software are not humans but perfect machines”. Computers implement our code. And code is the design. Sure you can “design the design” at a higher levels. Every step of the software creation process is design.
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