Screen Prototyping. By Diego Pulido

¶ … screen prototyping. By Diego Pulido

A prototype is a sample or model that is built to test a concept, process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from. It is designed to test and try out a new design so as to enhance precision by the people who use a particular system or analysts.

An article on paper-in-screen prototyping was used. The article talks of a low-fidelity prototype which is one type of prototype when a characteristic of a prototype is considered. It explores the advantages of low cost fidelity prototyping which is that they are low cost, fast and easy to recruit. A description on how to use the low-cost fidelity technique like paper prototyping is also looked at in the article. The shortcomings of using a low-fidelity prototype are also highlighted when a comparison is made between them and high fidelity prototypes. The article further gives a description of a paper-in-screen prototyping technique; which is placing a paper prototype of a mobile application inside a mobile device, is done by adopting images of low-fidelity (paper) prototypes to display on a mobile device screen. The article further talks of how practical the prototyping technique is since it leverages prototypes that are likely to have been made for testing previously. It also compares paper-in-screen prototyping with other prototyping techniques such as the regular paper prototyping and mixed fidelity prototypes (Pulido, 2011).

A step-by-step description of how to create a paper-in-screen prototype is provided in the paper and an iPhone application design is used as an example. The importance of testing a design using paper-in-screen prototypes is also explored, and its pros and cons are established .the use of the paper-in-screen prototypes is looked at and an emphasis is made on its use among UX practitioners. This technique is generally seen as a bridge between hi-fidelity prototyping and paper prototyping. This Article is from UX Magazine (Pulido, 2011).