Practicum 7 Christina Kalsow- Ramos

In my last blog post I talked about wireframing and how that can help lay the groundwork for the website. The next step after wireframing is prototyping. Basically what this is, is validating a design by iteration before releasing the product. "to do this we must test specific scenarios with users, collect the feedback, analyze it and use the findings to further refine the design adn resolve usability problems." Prototypes focus on important scenarios that the designer wants to test. Just like there were several types of wireframing, there are several kinds of prototyping: paper prototypes and digital prototypes. Paper prototypes, this can be more beneficial than digital prototypes because often clients feel more comfortable criticizing something that does not look polished or realistic. It is more flexible and can be easily manipulated during/after feedback is given. Digital prototyping mimics the actual functionality of the product. Lots of details are shown on these prototypes. It is interesting that they suggest not to use photoshop because clients would expect the design to look exactly like that in the browser and as many people know each browser reads code differently so often a design does not look the same across safari, firefox, internet explore, crome etc. The book suggests that preparing a mock up in html and css and then showing it on the clients browser is the best method. The next step after prototyping, is testing to make sure that everything is plauseable and would flow.