The Dark Side of Prototyping

Are there any downsides of prototyping? Not really. But as with everything else in life, you might stumble and hurt yourself if you don’t watch your step. This article points out some of the banana skins to steer clear of.

Olsen, Henrik. GUUUI (2007). Articles>User Interface>Methods

Essential Use Cases and Responsibility in Object-Oriented Development  

Essential use cases are abstract, lightweight, technology-free dialogues of user intentions and system responsibilities that effectively capture requirements for user interface design. Employing essential use cases in typical object-oriented development processes requires designers to translate them into conventional use cases, costing time, imposing rework, and delaying work on the object-oriented development until the user interface design is complete. We describe how essential use cases can drive object-oriented development directly, without any intervening translation, allowing user interface development to proceed in parallel. Working with essential use cases yields some unexpected further benefits: analysts can take advantage of recurring patterns in essential use cases, and the crucial common vocabulary of responsibilities lets designers trace directly from the essential use cases to the objects in their design.

Biddle, Robert, James Noble and Ewan Tempero. Constantine and Lockwood (2001). Articles>User Interface>Methods

From Essential Use Cases to Objects  

One of the main motivations for essential use cases was the context of user interface design. We, however, have been exploring the application of essential use cases in general object-oriented system development. Our experience has been very positive, and we found advantages to essential use cases that assist in both analysis and in design. This paper outlines two techniques involving essential use cases: use of role-play in requirements analysis, and distribution of system requirements from essential use cases to objects.

Biddle, Robert, James Noble and Ewan Tempero. Constantine and Lockwood (2003). Articles>User Interface>Methods

Prototyping Beyond the Sunshine Scenario

Prototypes often model one flow of interaction--the path that users are most likely to take. But when we create interaction designs with dynamic and complex flows, we often need to include deviations from the sunshine scenarios to see whether they work. In this article, we'll look at how to do this Visio and Axure.

Olsen, Henrik. GUUUI (2006). Articles>User Interface>Interaction Design>Methods