People-Centered Design

Getting good feedback from people in advance of substantial investment in the concept requires that people can properly imagine the experience your product is going to give them.

For well over 20 years now people have talked about the importance of user experience prototyping (e.g. Marion Buchenau and Jane Fulton Suri) – and yet still the emphasis is on UI prototyping (or mainly visual design prototyping).  But showing people a beautifully rendered visual UI does not necessarily help them engage constrictively with the question as to whether it offers them the experience they need.

In the development of Elekta’s MRLinac regular prototyping and user evaluations took place (see Jenkins et al for more information on this)  using increasingly sophisticated tools. But when the first connected system was built that enabled us to walk users through the full workflow there were a surprising number of moments when we saw light bulbs going off in people’s heads as they realised what the new concept really meant.

Protopie is a prototyping tool (developed in South Korea) that greatly enables a shift towards experience prototyping. I am a huge fan of Protopie and want to see more people taking advantage of its power. I have therefore started building a small website that provides illustrated tips and tricks for using Protopie, as well as a few warnings about the pitfalls that can occur.