I’m now a believer.

I used to read a lot about the power of UI prototypes in accurately modeling the user’s expectations and mental models of how they envision the system.

It was all good talk on paper.

But it wasn’t until I did one myself at work. A very basic dynamic form prototype using the amazing and easy-to-use software Axure. The software let’s you design not only the form, but the actual interactions using easy tools which can later be exported to actual and dynamic HTML pages!

I took this prototype to the end-user for first time review. I was amazed by how this simple prototype uncovered so many hidden user’s expectations and desires. I incorporated the feedback I got from them into the design to come out with second iteration, this time with little more details and user interactions (higher fidelity).

Again, the second iteration was amazing in uncovering even more requirements that we otherwise would only discover at a much later stage, probably during testing and training. What a nightmare that would have been!

The point is:

The early prototypes and review sessions have so far helped us tremendously that I don’t think I will ever go through UI design process without doing a number of iterations on prototypes that user can see and improve, way before development kicks off. The savings you receive from these are far more than you can imagine. And it does pay off, I swear it does!