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explanations of behaviors and underlying processing. A quick-and-dirty way to do this is to scan the
prototype pieces and use them in the spec. The image quality will leave something to be desired, but
this method is fast. Alternatively, some companies render the prototype pieces in a way that shows the
final appearance—this takes more time, but sometimes high-fidelity visuals are needed, especially if an
outside group is doing the implementation. Companies differ in the degree of detail they require in
specifications, but ask yourself whether the paper prototype might be a useful starting point.
Documentation of the Interface Behavior
Paper prototypes show the elements of an interface. But information about how those elements
interact—as well as the behavior of hard-to-prototype elements such as cursors—is often found only in
the head of the Computer. A team at The MathWorks created a method for capturing and managing
this information. During prototyping and design sessions, team decisions about how the prototype
would behave were recorded on index cards ("When the user clicks, the selection rectangle
recenters."). During usability testing, the team looked for places where hard-to-prototype behavior was
confusing or hadn't been clarified, such as how to make a control point visible on top of a complex
image. They created additional index cards for these.
The original intent of the index cards was as a way to track problems to be solved, as well as to help
translate the users' actions into specific functions in the technical design document. (As it turned out,
they made a good "cheat sheet" for the Computer as well.) But the quality engineer and the
documentation writer for the project—both of whom were involved in the prototyping exercise—found
additional ways to use the index cards. By the time the developers created a working version of the
software, the quality engineer had used the cards to create a test plan and the documentation writer
had a first draft of the tool's documentation.
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