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Paper Prototyping and Usability
Entire topics are devoted to usability (a.k.a. user-centered design). Although I can't summarize the
entire discipline in a few paragraphs, I've found it helpful to think about usability in the following ways:
The goal of any user-centered activity is to make the interface better for its intended audience and
purpose, in a way that is consistent with the business goals of the organization producing that
interface.
Usability is like love: The more you give away, the more you have. You can help spread the love by
passing along the concepts in this topic to others. It'll come back to you in the form of more
successful products.
Usability is also similar to pornography in its ability to elude precise definition. To paraphrase the
famous line by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, "I know usability when I see it." If you
do much reading about usability, you'll come across many definitions of it (some more usable than
others). Don't get bogged down in the semantics; you'll be able to recognize good usability before
you can define it.
Like Don Norman says, a usable interface becomes invisible; sometimes you know you've gotten it
right when your customers/users don't talk about how usable the product is ... they're too busy
raving about how you've made their life better.
Don Norman is a pillar of the usability profession. His first topic, The Design of Everyday
Things, is 15 years old but still a classic. It's a deceptively entertaining read that will have a
profound effect on how you look at objects and interfaces of every kind. Don first described the
concept of an invisible computer in DOET (as it's affectionately abbreviated) and later went on to
write a whole topic called The Invisible Computer .
Readers familiar with usability may notice that I tend to view paper prototyping and usability testing as
overlapping and often synonymous concepts. But that's a generalization, and like any generalization it
isn't entirely accurate. Many companies create prototypes in software and conduct usability tests with
them. Paper prototypes also have uses beyond usability testing, such as internal reviews. But most of
the time when I use the term paper prototyping, I assume that the prototype is being created with the
intent of usability testing it.
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