lo fi prototypes

tomorrow i’m running a series of user tests with low fidelity prototypes. i’m increasingly appreciating that low fidelity actually encourages participatory design with your customers. if your mockups are high fidelity, then test subjects are going to relate to it increasingly like it’s set in stone and they have to succeed or not succeed. but a few buttons on the page made of post-it notes - and encouraging them to move things around to where they would expect them - will encourage customers to get involved in the design process with you and tell you more about how they would really like the product to behave.

of course take ideas with grains of salt. but it can be hard sometimes to get people to really open up in a short user test. and i’m increasingly appreciating anything that encourages that openness.

core77 posted an interesting comparison between design methods yesterday, worth a gander.

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