One of the advantages of prototyping is the ability to work through a design concept. A team at Ford discuss the design thinking behind their Verve concept car. Pay attention around 1:25 left. You’ll see a guy prototyping rims for the car. It’s an interesting look at combining sketching and prototyping.
What can apply from this to software prototyping?
What are you waiting for? Get on over there and vote for my panel Prototyping: It’s Kind of Like Speed Dating.
There’s a new report out by leading research firm Forrester on how usability alone is not enough. My company, Messagefirst, was one of the firms included in the research for this report. Here’s the excerpt from the report Desirable Online Experiences: Taking Websites Beyond Usable and Useful:
Consumers are spending more and more time online, seeking out experiences that are relevant, engaging, and personal. However, many Web sites make users struggle to complete simple goals, have little to no emotional punch, and fail to embrace the diversity of consumers’ wants and needs. To make matters worse, today’s Web organizations must often backburner projects that would improve their sites’ desirability factor in order to fix more pressing problems. As a result, the topic of desirability largely remains a mystery in the user experience community. We’ve explored three tactics for creating desirable online experiences: 1) providing engaging content and functionality, 2) focusing on aesthetics, and 3) incorporating elements of game design.