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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Wireframes, interactive prototypes, and UX specifications are among the fundamental deliverables of every UX project. They are also the most labor and time intensive to produce due to constant changes in business requirements. Given these circumstances, Axure is quickly taking over as the preferred tool for prototyping. However, prototyping in Axure is strikingly different from the conventional method of producing static wireframes and to rapidly develop interactive prototypes in Axure, you'll need to have a good understanding of the tool and its features.Whether you are an individual practitioner or a member of a UX team, a consultant, or an employee, this book will teach you how to use Axure, one of the leading UX tools. You will learn to use Axure for producing top-quality deliverables and tackling the demands of rapid iterative UX projects of any complexity and size, and for any platform and device.Axure RP 6 Prototyping Essentials takes a very pragmatic approach to showing you how to use Axure and produce impressive deliverables while saving labor and time. You may not be in a position to change how projects are scheduled, budgeted, and managed, but you can be more creative and productive by mastering one of the leading UX tools in the market.
After an initial introduction to Axure's user interface, terminology, and features, this book walks you through a medium-size UX project: a digital library that sells books, newspapers, and movies. Although some aspects of the prototyping process are simplified for the sake of clarity and efficiency, the demo project is an opportunity to discuss in context and in sequence topics such as addressing business and technical requirements, handling use cases and flow diagrams, low and high fidelity wireframe construction, interactivity, writing annotations, generating detailed UX specifications, and traceability.
For the most part, Axure 6 RP Prototyping Essentials can be read in sequence or used as a reference guide.
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Seitenzahl: 543
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012
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Table of Contents
Axure RP 6 Prototyping Essentials
Axure RP 6 Prototyping Essentials
Copyright © 2012 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: January 2012
Production Reference: 1170112
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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ISBN 978-1-84969-164-2
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Cover Image by AnnaMarie White (<[email protected]>)
Credits
Author
Ezra Schwartz
Reviewers
Michael Blakely
Jeff Harrison
Mark Johnston
Elizabeth Srail
Acquisition Editor
Wilson D'souza
Lead Technical Editor
Susmita Panda
Technical Editor
Azharuddin Sheikh
Copy Editors
Neha Shetty
Brandt D'Mello
Project Coordinator
Jovita Pinto
Proofreader
Linda Morris
Indexers
Hemangini Bari
Monica Ajmera Mehta
Graphics
Conidon Miranda
Production Coordinator
Alwin Roy
Cover Work
Alwin Roy
Foreword
Axure is a powerful tool to transform abstract requirements into a working detailed visualization to support implementation and reduce project risks. We have experienced these benefits with many of our clients, allowing us to successfully lead enterprise design efforts with the world’s largest corporations. The lessons Ezra shares with you in this book—planning what your specification will look like, and structuring masters to substantially reduce redundancy and rework, to name a few—will help you unlock Axure's full potential and will save you significant amounts of work later in your project.
Here is a brief story about how Axure and the techniques in this book were used successfully on a recent enterprise project: We were engaged with a large Silicon Valley client to lead the User Experience effort for an enterprise Oracle implementation billed to "transform" the company's Quote to Cash internal systems. The big IT consulting players were on board with teams of business analysts, Oracle experts, and project managers. We began our efforts by heading out to the clients to conduct field research with the company's business partners and internal users. We followed this with a "Baseline" usability test of the existing system and concluded that an entirely new user interface was needed to truly transform the business. While conducting our research, the initial business requirements were starting to unfold, and we were sketching out user stories and task flows to understand the current business processes and areas for optimization. We then used Axure to visualize what the new system could look like.
Things were going along smoothly when an e-mail came in at 5 pm on Friday, requesting my presence at a brief executive meeting that same day. The execs were very happy with all the research we had accomplished and excited about seeing the future. In fact, we were informed that the executive sponsor would be having an annual meeting with the top 170 company leaders at an offsite resort in Carmel in 2 weeks and wanted to present a vision of what the transformation would look like. This was great—true executive sponsorship—however it did not match with our project plan. The requirements were just being defined and we had barely cracked open Axure to begin wireframes. The executives asked me to show what we had designed so far. I summarily showed them a left sidebar menu and a blank screen.
They looked at me perplexed and said, "We don't see anything." "I know," I replied. "We have been completing our user research and are just finishing early sketches of potential designs. The vision you want to see was scheduled for six weeks from now."
That obviously was not going to meet the needs of our executive sponsor, so we quickly began creating a vision of the future in Axure. Loren Baxter (a contributor to this book) was evolving the prototype as fast as we could think of new ideas. He truly played Axure like a pianist at Carnegie Hall. Mastery of the tool (in this case, Axure) was critical to our ability to start from an empty slate and define a vision in days versus weeks or months. We met daily with execs and showed our builds as they evolved. This in turn accelerated the refinement of the requirements since the visualization clearly communicated the requirements as they were being discussed. The executive presentation was a resounding success and the entire company leadership became aligned with the new vision we created.
Moving from vision to a detailed set of wireframes and specifications was our next challenge. Ezra was brought on board to lead this effort and he applied the principles and strategies presented in this book. Our team of UX designers worked tirelessly during the next several months visualizing over 90 Business Requirements Documents, totaling over 1.5 million words. Many of the features in Axure 6 are a direct result of feedback we provided to the Axure team as we built our wireframes and detailed specifications. We used the naming strategies outlined in this book to keep us organized and to communicate to the larger project team as we ensured that our wireframes and specifications were in sync with the business requirements.
Once our UX wireframes and specifications were complete, we handed off our UX deliverables to the developers for implementation. By this time, the project team had grown to nearly 200 people working globally towards a very aggressive implementation date. All the work we had put into using Axure for detailed annotated wireframes, interaction models, and detailed specifications was leveraged to keep the project on track despite the usual changes in scope, IT implementation challenges, and changes in requirements.
The QA team used our wireframes to build test cases long before the development code was available. We continuously updated wireframes and specifications as changes to the requirements occurred and the naming conventions provided critical traceability between our wireframes and the business requirements. At the same time, we continuously used Axure prototypes to perform usability tests on areas of known concern to validate our design decisions as the project evolved.
Whether your project is a small effort for your department or a larger enterprise effort like the one I have described, the techniques and strategies in this book will help you successfully bridge the gap between abstract business requirements and what ultimately gets implemented by your development team. Axure can provide significant value to your organization while dramatically reducing project risks. I suggest you read this book in layers. First, master the great new techniques available in Axure 6 for creating rich visualizations. Then, apply the naming and architecture strategies and adapt them to your project needs.
Good luck with your prototypes!
James Hobart
President, Classic System Solutions, Inc.
About the Author
Ezra Schwartz is an Information and User Experience Architect, who specializes in logistics of complex user interface frameworks. He focuses on device and locale agnostic global enterprise applications, team collaboration strategies, and UX requirements traceability and specification documentation for phased, multi-release projects.
Ezra helps clients to integrate successfully rapid UX prototyping, validation, and testing with their development culture. He assists clients with adoption of user-centered-design methodologies, compliance, and best practices. He has lead mission-critical user experience projects in the finance, aviation, healthcare, mobile, publishing, media research, manufacturing, academic research, and software development industries. Ezra also provides his services pro-bono to select not-for-profit organizations.
Ezra is the founder and organizer of AxureWorld.org, a free community-driven international conference, dedicated to rapid UX prototyping. He talks regularly about user experience topics at conferences and on his blog www.artandtech.com.
Acknowledgement
Many colleagues and friends have contributed directly, or indirectly, to the writing of this book. I would like to extend special thanks to Oren Beit-Arie, Udi Arad, Carl Grant, Dino Eliopulos, Frank Torbey, Robert Albrecht-Mallinger, Dennis Connolly, Jirka Kende, Helena Porczak, Loren Baxter, Jerry Smith, Tim Robb, Marco Mastrapasqua, Vince Torres, Jim Hobart, and Victor Hsu, for their support and encouragement over the years.
I am tremendously grateful to my colleagues Elizabeth Srail, Michael Blakely, Jeff Harrison, and Mark Johnston for their work on my drafts and their detailed, honest, knowledgeable, thoughtful, and generous comments.
My sincere gratitude to the editors and staff at Packt Publishing, Susmita Panda, Jovita Pinto, Azharuddin Sheikh, and Wilson D'souza for their guidance, patience, and continuous encouragement throughout this project.
To my family and friends, Julia, Hillel and Eitan Gauchman, Eda and Hedva Schwartz, Ruth and Doron Blatt, Christine and Scott Marriott, Ayelet and Alon Fishbach, Galila Spharim and Yigal Bronner, thanks for cheerleading, and a special thanks to Lisa Comforty for her counsel, and to Barbara Drapchow whose clarinet lessons provided much-needed creative breaks.
Finally, a big hug to Orit, Ben, and Yoav, who waited patiently for me to resurface and resume normal family life.
About the Reviewers
Michael Blakely is a leading expert in User Experience Architecture, specializing in excellent design solutions. He works as a freelance contractor, creating everything from large-scale website redesigns to enterprise-level web applications. During his 15 years of experience in the industry, he has worked with many noteworthy clients, some of which are Disney, Cisco Systems, Bloomberg, Ernst & Young, and Walgreens. His current work involves designing mobile apps using Axure RP to communicate solutions and the user experience to clients and stakeholders.
Educated at Utah State University, Michael Blakely holds an MSc in Instructional Technology. Mike is an Axure Master and Trainer. A devoted power-user, he is active in the Axure community, contributing as a Beta-Tester and a Technical Reviewer for Axure RP 6 Prototyping Essentials.
He maintains his portfolio at www.behance.net/michaelblakely. You can know more about him at www.blakelyinteractive.net. He is also available on Linkedin at http://www.linkedin.com/pub/michael-blakely/1/67b/5a0.
Jeff Harrison is a senior User Experience Consultant at Evantage Consulting in Minneapolis, where he specializes in interaction design, information architecture, and data visualization. In addition to his client work, Jeff is an Axure trainer and frequent contributor to the Axure forums, where he is unhealthily motivated by the impossible.
Jeff lives in the Twin Cities with his wife, Jenna, and two kids, Evelyn and Eli.
Mark Johnston has lived and breathed design and its application to software and the Internet for over a decade and a half. He has been on an evolutionary journey through the print and Web to his current passion of user experience design. During this time, he has pursued the development of many skills and techniques, including visual design, HTML, CSS, Javascript, accessibility, interaction design, and information architecture and usability.
He has applied the knowledge he has gained while learning his craft to websites ranging from the small and static through to large dynamic media rich sites, as well as B2B solutions and line of business applications.
He enjoys getting his hands dirty, forging better experiences for the people that are sometimes forgotten in large companies; people who deal direct with the customers, to make their life a little easier and in turn help provide better support to its customers. He aims to create solutions that work well for the customers without sacrificing the needs of the company.
Mark settled at Austar, Australia's leading regional subscription TV provider and ASX200 company, a little over 7 years ago, where he has been honing his skills as a practitioner in the user experience field, while at the same time helping to further develop programs within Austar to drive user centered thinking, design, and processes.
Mark believes that in every worker's toolbox, there are a handful of great tools to help in order to get the job done. For Mark, Axure is a very important tool to build rich prototypes to gain direct feedback.
I want to thank Ezra for the opportunity to work with him and Packt on this book. I also want to thank Victor and the team at Axure for being one of the most supportive and responsive software companies I have dealt with, putting up with all my e-mails. Last but not least, I would like to thank my great team and the people at Austar that I work with, who have allowed us to effect real change for our customers through our work.
Elizabeth Srail has been interested in learning about people her entire life. Drawn to this field because the idea of helping business executives understand that they should learn how the company's customers behave and think before making strategic decisions was reason enough.
Elizabeth's philosophy of a good user experience is a thoughtful, scalable architecture, an amazing visual design that does not become quickly outdated, and a smart and flexible technical architecture. Elizabeth was the UX designer on a website that incorporated each of these elements, earning a Webby Honorable mention in the Parenting/Family category.
Since 1999, Elizabeth has worked at large financial institutions, marketing/branding agencies, and for UX specific services companies. Therefore, she has done UX work in many industries: financial, retail, education, spirits, and health and wellness. This diverse experience has helped aide her success in the UX field. She has been using Axure continuously for three years, and is convinced; she is a proficient user of Axure, because Mr. Schwartz taught her many tricks that are too, in the book.
Elizabeth graduated Summa Cum Laude from Ohio University with a BA in Finance and a BA in Management Information Systems. She also accidentally earned a minor in Spanish because she enjoyed speaking the language so much.
On a personal note, Elizabeth is a devoted yoga student of the Ashtanga yoga system and believes that an expansive body leads to an expansive mind.
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To my parents, Eda and Zeev Schwartz
Preface
User experience (UX) has gone mainstream. It is finally recognized by business and software development stakeholders as a critical pillar of social acceptance and commercial success. The timing coincides with an explosion in expressive means to create new and highly compelling user interfaces that operate on a wide range of powerful devices, such as smartphones and tablets. UX encompasses a wide range of disciplines including cognitive psychology, user research, and visual design, and it all comes together in the prototype—an interactive simulation that excites decision makers and validates the design approach before it is coded.
Boxes and arrows just don't cut it anymore. Axure, the leading UX tool for wireframing, rapid prototyping, and specifications has quickly become the UX tool of choice for thousands of practitioners worldwide. The UX community is fortunate to have a growing number of dedicated simulation tools, but currently few are getting close to striking Axure's balance of maturity, features, and cost.
This book offers a holistic overview of Axure and its use throughout the interface development life cycle. The intent is to help you construct wireframes and prototypes with your 'headlights on', taking into consideration the inherent iterative nature of the UX process. A sample project is weaved into the chapters. It provides an opportunity to discuss, in context and in sequence, practical topics such as addressing business and technical requirements, handling use cases and flow diagrams, low and high-fidelity wireframe construction, naming conventions, creating interactions, writing annotations, generating detailed UX specifications, and requirements traceability.
You may not be in a position to change how projects are scheduled, budgeted, and managed, but hopefully, by the time you finish this book you will feel confident about adding Axure to your set of trusted UX tools. Based on my personal experience, I can promise you that it will enhance your ability to deliver top-quality deliverables and tackle the demands for rapid iterative UX projects of any complexity and size, for any platform and device.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, PrototypingFundamentals, offers a checklist of considerations for using Axure in various project types, and introduces the perspectives of various stakeholders who collaborate with UX in a typical project.
Chapter 2, Axure Basics—the User Interface, introduces Axure basics: file formats, the workspace, wireframe pane, sitemap pane, masters pane, widgets pane, widget properties pane, page properties pane, dynamic panel manager, toolbar and menu bar.
Chapter 3, Prototype Construction Basics, covers various aspects of requirements and use cases, flow diagrams, navigation, masters, dynamic panels, and prototyping for mobile apps.
Chapter 4, Interactivity101, details various Axure interactions, events, cases, actions, and naming conventions.
Chapter 5, Advanced Interactions, covers some advanced topics such as raised events, variables, conditions, drag and drop, and animation.
Chapter 6, Widget Libraries, introduces masters and widget libraries, built-in libraries, and community libraries. Using the information given in this chapter, you can create your own widget libraries, manage libraries, manage visual design patterns, and device specific libraries.
Chapter 7, ManagingPrototypeChange, helps manage widget style editor, style painter, and iteration management. It also covers topics such as prototyping for multiple delivery formats and devices, strategic annotation, manage phased and multi-release projects.
Chapter 8, FunctionalSpecifications, provides information that lets us manage elements such as page notes and annotation fields, annotation strategy, requirement management and configuring specifications generators.
Chapter 9, Collaboration, provides useful information about shared repository, naming conventions for teams, responsibilities, workflow, training, troubleshooting.
What you need for this book
In order to follow the demo project in this book, and to experiment on your own, you will need the following:
Who this book is for
This book is intended for:
The book assumes either no or a little familiarity with Axure. Perhaps, you are evaluating the tool for an upcoming project or are required to quickly get up to speed on a project you just joined.
The book assumes some familiarity with the principals of the User-Centered Design methodology.
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Code words in text are shown as follows: "One or more actions are organized in a unit named case and a case is associated with a specific event, such as OnClick".
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "The Subscribe and Log In buttons (A) in the dynamic panel DP Subscribe Actions Bar (B) fit the width of the dynamic panel".
Note
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Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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Chapter 1. Prototyping Fundamentals
"We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us."—Marshal McLuhan
I find Marshal McLuhan's insight to be especially intriguing in the context of tools that help us conceptualize and express user experience. In fact, my motivation to write this book has been shaped by my personal experience with Axure, since I started using it back in 2007.
What struck me then, and continues to excite me today, was the freedom to design, test, iterate, and present fully-clickable interactive prototypes. I did not need a developer. I did not need to spend months to learn a programming or authoring language. It was easy, fast, and fun. As someone who does user experience for a living, Axure afforded me my own user experience.
Within a few hours, I had my first prototype running, and since that day, I never looked back, and have since rarely used Visio, my previous wireframing tool. I also realized that, in addition to being able to create interactive prototypes, Axure helped me deal with a major chore—creating and updating the user interface functional specifications document.
If you ever created a specifications document the traditional way by using Visio, Word, and a screen capture utility, you know the drill—a tedious process that involves adding footnote tags to Visio wireframes, taking screenshots of these wireframes, saving them, importing them to Word, and finally, writing the relevant annotations. If you update the wireframe, you have to retake the screen capture, save, replace its version in Word, and update the annotations. Multiply this process by the number of wireframes in your project, and the magnitude of the effort becomes clear and daunting.
As the UX design is inherently an iterative process, the specifications update process is a real drain of time, money, and energy, which is bad for everyone involved in the project. With Axure's integrated specifications, I found an innovative approach that reduces, greatly, the manual process. Axure numbers the annotations on the wireframes, takes the screenshots, and organizes the entire content in a customizable layout. While configuring the specifications document takes some experimentation, the effort pales in comparison to the manual process. Moreover, once you are happy with the way the specifications generator works, you no longer need to deal with it.
Axure's support for team collaboration was an important enhancement that helped cement its adaptation among UX professionals, because it underscored the dramatic shift in the perception of UX among business stakeholders, as critical to the success of software projects. As any sizable project requires multiple UX resources, collaboration has become a prerequisite that Axure addresses with its Shared Projects feature.
As I started to use Axure, I occasionally stumbled on technical issues or had questions I could not figure out. Responses were prompt and detailed, files I sent for checkups were reviewed and issues explained, and occasionally, immediate follow-up of software updates that fixed bugs I mentioned. This dedication to customer support has been, and continues to be, by far, the deepest I have ever encountered.
I also discovered an incredibly helpful and responsive community of fellow users worldwide, on Axure's Discussion Forum. Typically, you can get a helpful response to your query within hours and people are generous with their expertise. Over the years, as I gained some expertise with the tool, it has been nice to be able to help others in the forum. I will admit that this level of support is very important to me. When a tool becomes critical to my work, it has a direct impact on my livelihood. Support feels like a lifeline in times of crisis, and knowing that such a level of support exists, plays a major role in my loyalty and tolerance.
Axure's value was so compelling that I was able to convince clients and team members to approve the use of the tool, back when it was far less known among UX practitioners. This UX-centric integrated environment for wireframing, specifications, and collaboration also carried a price tag that was a small fraction of the cost and implementation complexities of enterprise tools. Occasionally, clients would raise a concern about the ability to find UX resources who know how to use Axure. UX designers would raise a concern about switching from tools they were very familiar with to a new tool. These two perspectives can potentially feed each other in a loop, which makes it difficult to effect change. It really takes external pressures to drive change.
Indeed, the growth of Axure's popularity among UX designers paralleled two important trends: The solidification of UX as an integrated part of the overall software development process, and technological advances that afforded the creation of rich user experiences. As more companies recognized the business value of modern user experience, budgets opened up, and with them, the demand for UX professionals.
With increased demand came also the pressures to deliver on time and within budget, both often aggressive to absurdity. At a certain point, too-ambitious schedules create serious friction with core principles of user-centered design, an inherently time consuming methodology that calls for contextual research, iterative design, and user validation. I realized, as many others did, that on top of helping me produce excellent deliverables on a tight schedule, Axure is helping me stay profitable, because I can deliver a lot more value to my clients, in less time and less sweat.
This is an important point. At the end of the day, design agencies and independent consultants need to turn a profit in order to stay viable. It is impossible to stay viable for long, if you have to double and triple your working hours just to keep up with the pressure of constant updates to a prototype and specifications. In-house UX teams must also control their cost and increase their productivity. Axure helps maintain profitability, because it is relatively easy to master, and it affords substantial efficiencies through clever use of customizable patterns, templates, and automation.
In conclusion, and reflecting back on McLuhan's observation earlier in this chapter, Axure is a tool that has been shaped by UX designers over the course of nearly a decade. At the time of writing this book, it is widely used, with over 30,000 licensed copies world wide, running on Mac and Windows. Axure is probably the de facto UX design tool in our industry. To what degree does it shape its users? It is for each of us to discover.
In this chapter, we introduce a prototyping checklist that covers the diverse set of variables that are involved in user experience projects, and how your approach to constructing an Axure project file might be affected by the specifics of your own project. Also, in the spirit of User Centered Design, and because UX projects are a collaborative effort, I thought it will be valuable to include the insights and expectations of real people who've experienced work on UX projects in various roles ranging from business, project management, visual design and development, as well as other user experience practitioners.
The art of UX prototyping
Prototyping is an ancient practice. Back in the fifteenth century, Leon Battista Alberti described an event that took place in the First century BC. In his classic text named OntheArtofBuildinginTenBooks, Alberti mentions that Julius Caesar "completely demolished a house on his estate in Nemi, because it did not totally meet with his approval". He continues to recommend "the time-honored custom, practiced by the best builders, of preparing not only drawings and sketches but also models of wood or any other material...".
One might think that, given his authority as the ruler of the Roman Empire, Julius Caesar was perhaps abusing his powers by acting in a capricious, short-tempered manner. We can also think about Caesar as a typical client, reacting somewhat badly to a design that did not meet his requirements and specifications.
Another way to think about the event has an immediate relevance to us, two millennia later. The core of the problem is how to figure out what the client wants and deliver a product that meets those expectations. This is a problem of communication, and UX designers face the challenge of resolving it satisfactorily on every project they work on. Often, the client might have a clear idea in their head of the exact way the building—and for that matter, the software—should look and function. Sometimes, the client has no idea about the structure or the function of the software but has a pressing need to have such a structure in place, in order to fulfill a business or some other pressing need.
From the early days of computer science, people found the obvious parallels to physical architecture and borrowed from it liberally, terms and titles such as architect, build, configuration, and so on. Indeed, like architects and builders of physical structures, we too need to create a functional product, face the challenges of tracking against tight budgets and schedules, and keep our clients happy.
However, beyond borrowing the terminology from architecture, aspects that relate to engineering and process rigor take much longer to implement. For example, the use of modeling in user interface and user experience design, as we see it today, came in quite late in the software development life cycle. This perhaps explains why a very high number of software projects fair badly, but our cities are not littered by the ruins of collapsed buildings. Compare a large architecture project to build a 100-story skyscraper, with a large enterprise software project. What are the odds that both will be fully up and running within years? They are very high for the skyscraper, and far less for the software.
In other words, if we compare the rigor, efficiencies, and processes that translate a cardboard model and blueprints into a skyscraper to the typical chaos of software projects (perhaps with the exception of software for airplanes and such no-failure use), we probably have some ways to go. It is an evolutionary process.
The truth is that, of the billions of private residents, public buildings, and industrial structures that humans constructed on earth, since moving out of caves, relatively few ever benefited from the design of an architect. Not that these are necessarily bad, in fact, many of the structures we see today evolved successfully over millennia. People build their own homes, individually or as a communal effort. You can read Donald Harington's TheArchitectureoftheArkansasOzarks, for a wonderful account of such an evolutionary process.
Alberti further writes that "Having constructed those models, it will be possible to examine clearly and consider thoroughly the relationship between the site and the surrounding district, the shape of the area, the number and order of parts of a building. It will also allow one to increase or decrease the size of those elements freely, to exchange them, and make new proposals and alterations until everything fits together well and meets with approval. Furthermore, it will provide a surer indication of the likely costs, which is not unimportant, by allowing one to calculate costs".
It is fascinating to 'translate' Alberti's writings about modeling for buildings, to UX prototyping for software. He is talking about the ability to articulate the layout, hierarchy, organization, order of entities, and also the ability to use the prototype for cost and effort estimation.
Another example of providing a client with 'wireframes' and ensuring alignment with their needs is mentioned in the book PaintingandExperiencein15th-CenturyItaly by MichaelBaxandall, who writes about the fifteenth century painter Filippo Lippi. Back in 1457, Lippi was commissioned to paint a triptych for Giovanni di Cosimo de' Medici, the Italian banker and Patron of the Arts. In a letter to Giovanni, Filippo writes "...And to keep you informed, I send a drawing of how the triptych is made of wood, and with its height and breadth...".
Prototyping interaction
Therefore, it turns out that we did not quite invent the prototyping wheel after all. The value, ROI calculations, and fancy technical terminology of prototyping have been around for a couple of millennia, if not more. There are, however, several important differences that make prototyping a rich user experience that is particularly challenging for UX practitioners.
Most structures don't involve dynamic interaction with the user. Buildings stand there, whether there is an occupant or not. Moreover, when you enter a building, rooms do not contextualize themselves instantly to reflect your identity. When it comes to software and prototyping a rich user experience, the complications come from the need to demonstrate the following:
For example, the prevalent navigation model back in the client-server model of the '80s involved moving from one window to another, as part of a workflow involved in completing a task. In the '90s, common web navigation was hyperlinking from one page to another, facilitating a similar goal. These days, with asynchronous in-page data updates, the need to negotiate multiple windows has been greatly diminished, but the complexities of prototyping in-page data refreshes have increased.
Personalized experience based on login: The prototype needs to simulate how the system will render for different users, based on the entitlements. In the case of non-registered users, the site might display special offers to entice the user to register. A registered user may get information based on preferences they have set in an earlier session, and a paying user needs access to additional content, based on past activity on the site. Increasingly, we are asked to model all of these permutations.Scalability and future scope: Many applications are deployed in phases, making it possible for the business to prioritize their investment in the project, based on strategic goals, practical budgetary, and technical constraints. The prototype, which often begins as a fully-fledged visionary concept, needs to be able to support 'graceful degradation', or fallback to less-ambitious capabilities of the present, and scale in the future.Adaptability to localize: In a global economy, a common requirement is to develop an application that can easily be localized to reflect the language and cultural preferences of the locale or demographics of its users. The prototype needs to demonstrate the ability to render in multiple languages.Exception handling: One of the toughest requirements is to demonstrate the way an application will respond to the rules for moving through an interaction path; this can be subject to either user or system override.Like architecture and construction, software is an evolving art and science, but unlike construction, many of the tools and methodologies are evolving at such a rapid pace that it is very difficult to establish solid patterns of development. While physical architecture and construction have evolved over centuries and stay relevant for a long time, in technology, what worked ten years ago is practically ancient and moot by now.
The prototyping checklist
Before you embark on an Axure prototyping project, you should carefully consider several variables that will affect your approach to the prototype's construction and logistics. The following checklist is probably relevant to any type of prototyping software you may use, and not just to Axure. However, as you will see, neglecting to think in advance about these issues can cause serious roadblocks at various points in the project. The checklist is driven by the deliverables you are contracted to, or are expected to, deliver. This, in my opinion, is the most practical and beneficial angle with which to approach the work ahead.
The project
In the case of UX projects, size and scope matters, the type of application, and the purpose for which you are going to prototype can have a significant impact on the time, budget, and number of UX resources needed to get the job done on time. Surprisingly, it is not uncommon for projects that begin as small-scale efforts, to mushroom into increasingly complex and expensive ones.
UX resources, including internal teams, often do not have good visibility into the real drivers that move the project within the company. As a result, you may not always have the benefit of knowing in advance about what is going on, and changes to the scope and direction may come as a disappointing and frustrating surprise. There is little that can be done about such situations, but you can take a proactive approach to the way you construct your prototype, such that you have the ability to handle change, with reduced impacts to your own workload.
Simple websites
I am not sure what a simple website is, but we know one when we use one. I am using the word "simple" on purpose, because often, initial conversations around a project begin with "we need a simple website, something very basic...", which later turns out to be not that simple or trivial at all. A common understanding of 'simple' tends to focus instinctively on the number of pages involved. However, this can be a gravely misleading measure.
Is using Axure a good option for such simple tasks? Most likely not, especially if this is a one-time project, and you don't build user interfaces quite often. One could easily argue, and quite successfully, that in order to concentrate on the creation of content for a simple site, a common tool such as PowerPoint, will be more productive, because you can concentrate on the content and not lose energies on learning the prototyping tool. Additionally, the deployment of simple websites today is most successful when people use existing platforms, such as, WordPress or Squarespace. These enable a non-technical person to experiment and create highly sophisticated websites using prebuilt and easily-customizable templates.
Web applications and portals
This class of prototypes is probably the 'meat and potatoes' for Axure use. While there are many portal platforms, corporations often require custom developments and enhancements that feed their business needs. For many organizations, such projects are viewed as transformative and strategic, and are a significant financial investment. The following list shows some attributes such projects have in common:
Mobile apps
Apple continues its long tradition of affecting the user experience in profound ways. As it narrows the gap between mobile devices and the traditional computer experience, new interaction patterns, such as figure gestures, have been introduced in the lexicon of direct manipulation methods. With Axure's shared libraries, you can easily create prototypes that simulate the appearance of most popular mobile devices, from iPhones and iPads to Android.
Increasingly, organizations seek to extend their web applications from the Web to the mobile space, and you can prototype such apps in Axure, demonstrating their use on the targeted device.
Heuristic evaluation
One of the initial steps that UX designers are often asked to perform, at the inception of a redesign project, is a heuristic analysis of the existing user interface. The outcome can help decision makers to determine the scope, budget, and timelines for the project, with an opportunity to get the UX designer familiar with the application and its user experience issues.
You can, very rapidly, create a mini replica of the actual application by placing and linking screen captures in Axure pages. Add more details, such as droplists, form fields, and action buttons, at the appropriate places in the screen captures, to create a hybrid of images with a widget-based prototype. Add your comments in relevant annotation fields and generate an HTML prototype and a Word document, which you will use as you guide stakeholders through the findings.
User validation
A by-product of creating an interactive prototype in Axure is, of course, the fact that you have a tremendous instrument to use in various user validation activities, such as, focus groups and usability tests (UT). This is a no brainer. However, it is important to include, in the project's budget and timeline, the refactoring work necessary to use the prototype for such activities. This is especially important for complex applications that adjust the user interface based on the user login.
Deliverables: Prototype and specifications
Are you contracted, or expected, to deliver only an interactive prototype or also annotated specifications? The following list takes you through some important pointers to consider. Don't worry about Axure terms and functionalities you are not familiar with, as we cover those later in the book:
Balancing act: What stakeholders have to say
In his classic movie Rashomon, AkiraKurosawa
