If there was a best of show award given at the IA Summit, Fred Beecher’s (twitter) track on prototyping would be one of the nominees. Jonathan Knoll (twitter) summed it up best by stating ‘@fred_beecher’s prototyping session is turning into the most directly educational & practical I’ve seen in a long time.’ Below are my tweets from the presentation:

Prototyping is just a tool to communicate ideas and explore ideas.

The level of prototyping depends on the level of fidelity you need.

Fidelity has two types of dimensions: Visual Fidelity, lowest form is sketches. A sketch prototype is more than one page.

Highest Visual Prototype is colored JPG pages.

The second dimension of fidelity is functionality, how interactive the prototype needs to be.

Proof of concept allows you to test an idea in an interactive way to see if you are on the right path or not.

To get a good idea of if some of the design ideas work, it is important to test them in an interactive method.

“Slap & Map” image mapped jpgs offer a great middle ground between high visual fidelity and mid-level functionality.

Problems with production level prototyping is that it can constrain the design. As a designer we need to be free to explore.

People in development are creative, and they can offer insights into many design issues.

Content is another dimension of the fidelity of a prototype. Your prototype isn’t just about interaction, but also the content.

The screen just randomly rolled up into the ceiling for @fred_beecher, doing a great job just rolling with it though.

Content doesn’t need to be perfect, you just need plausible content the makes sense to the user when testing it.

“There is no such thing as high or low fidelity, only appropriate fidelity.” Bill Buxton

You can also test out the various concepts to see which work and which don’t.

Prototyping also allows you to have the conversation about ‘Is this what you meant?’

LVF/HFF prototypes are good for using testing as a design tools. It tells the designer if their ideas work or suck.

Proof of concept testing of isolated interactions, the design may work but it tests if the necessary interactions work as well.

Interactive prototypes supplement documentation for the development teams. Visually express the desired interactions.

HVR/LFF prototypes are good for discovering usability problems introduced by visual design.

You are able to find problems with the workflow when testing with non-savvy user groups.

HVF/HFF enable user testing as a design tool when testing new functionality into an established system.

This type of prototype gives you supplemental documentation for OFFSHORE dev teams.

“People are dumb and we like shiny and movable things” @fred_beecher

Know what questions you want your prototypes to answer, early in design the questions are structural, later questions about usability

In corporate agile mature ux organization use prototypes to show small complex proof of concepts.

Corporate-Waterfall-new to UX start off by developing detailed scenarios you want to test.

Walk through the interactive prototype using the printed documentation with developers and stakeholders.

Consulting/Agency Develop the detailed scenarios you want to test, sketch 2 oe 3 of your UX design concepts into small prototypes.

It is important to keep clients involved in the process, walk them through each prototype and gather their feedback.

Last context is when doing Hardware Devices. First step, once again, develop detailed scenarios you want to test.

Do as many iterations of a low functional fidelity prototype as you can.

Creating wireframes and prototypes are an important aspect of what an interaction designer does, and one of my personal passions. The key takeaway from this track was the methodology for the various forms of fidelity a prototype can have and the situations they are best utilized in. It is a fine line between having a detailed design and a conceptual design. Using Fred’s process for developing prototypes, a designer can better gauge when they need to do something more conceptual, or get down and dirty with the details.

Integrating Effective Prototyping Into Your Design Process

View more presentations from Fred Beecher.