What Paper is (and Isn't) Good For - Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Define and Refine User Interfaces - page 197

to it as you read the following sections.

Table 12.1: Comparison of Prototyping Methods for an e-Co m merce Web Site

Kind of Prototype Look Interaction Depth

Working version (e.g., Dreamweaver) Medium-high High Low-high

Slide show (e.g., Microsoft PowerPoint) Medium-high Medium Low-medium

Paper prototype Low-medium Low Medium-high

DENIM Low Medium Low-medium

Working Version

Any less-than-complete version of the site can be considered a working prototype if it supports the
tasks needed for usability testing. In the case of a Web site, the interface might be created in a
WYSIWYG editor such as Dreamweaver or FrontPage.

The look depends on the extent to which graphic design was included—the prototype might be text-only
or it might be designed down to the last pixel, but it's usually at least medium because it has straight
lines and legible text. The interaction of a working prototype is nearly the same as a functioning site
(although the response time might be different compared with the real Web server), so it gets a high
score. The depth can range from low to high because it depends on the amount of time spent coding
the site's behavior, such as getting product information from databases or processing an order form.
Some so-called working prototypes are just a linked set of screens with nothing beneath them (low
depth), whereas others have all of the underlying functionality in place to the point where they're
indistinguishable from the real site.

Slide Show

Some prototypes are created as fairly static "slide slows," for example, by pasting screen shots into
Microsoft PowerPoint. In the simplest variation, clicking the mouse anywhere advances to the next
page, although it is possible to provide more complex branching. (For interfaces other than Web sites,
something similar can be done using screen shots in linked HTML files as shown in Figure
12.1 —naturally, if you did this for a Web site it would be a Web site as opposed to a slide show of a
different type of interface.)

Figure 12.1: Two pages from a fixed sequence HTML prototype of a PDA application shown side-
by-side. This runs in a browser, but because there are only one or two hot spots per page, in
essence this prototype behaves like a slide show.

The look is usually in the medium-high range: high if screen shots are used, medium if wireframes are
used. I've even heard of people using scanned sketches, which would of course be low. The interaction
is only medium because you can't type, only click. The slide show usually has low to medium
depth —the user is constrained to a subset of all the possible paths through the interface, and the