Introduction - Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Define and Refine User Interfaces - page 10

The History of Paper Prototyping
I've been using paper prototypes since 1993, but I didn't invent the technique. Neither did Jared Spool,
whom I learned it from during my consulting days at User Interface Engineering. But determining where
paper prototyping originated is like trying to track a river upstream to a single source. The best I can do
is point out some of the tributaries.
If you peruse the References section or do an online search, you'll find the concept of "low-fidelity"
prototyping popping up circa 1990 from authors like Jakob Nielsen, Bob Virzi, and Tom Tullis, to name
just a few. A few people in high-tech companies were using the technique during the 1980s and earlier
( Chapter 2 has some interesting examples courtesy of Robin Kinkead). As far as I can tell, the method
was around for a decade or two before it showed up on the radar screen of the average person (such
as yours truly) involved in product development.
Paper prototyping has an estranged cousin: participatory design. I say estranged because many
authors discuss one or the other without mentioning (or perhaps even realizing) how related they are.
It's probably most accurate to describe paper prototyping as a subset of participatory design. There is a
whole body of literature pertaining to participatory design, which has been around for decades; this is
where the river starts branching off into more sources than I can do justice to. [ 1 ]
And of course, prototyping in its general sense has been around for a long time in engineering
disciplines and life in general. Before chiseling the first wagon wheel out of stone, I'm willing to bet that
primitive humans prototyped and tested the concept using some other medium. So any work pertaining
to prototyping could be considered a precursor to this topic.
[ 1 ] If you're interested, anything by Michael Muller is a good place to start. He's done considerable work
in participatory design. Think of him as your guide to that branch of the river.