UX: Why We Prototype

Podcast version on PodBean :

There's been a lot of debate about prototyping tools recently and rather than just argue what seems like my opinion I want to go back to the roots of prototyping, its purpose. Against that you can compare the prototyping tools on the market to see if they are objectively fit for purpose.

A UX prototype is like a 3D CAD model, not a photoshop image. It's designed to represent and test the solution functionality, affordances, limitations, breaking points, efficacy and viability. It is built on real data, not brand, opinion or ego. The research data shapes it to it's most valuable purpose.

A user should not have to make assumptions from a prototype by looking at it, they should be able to interact with it naturally.

A user should not have to be guided through it, from one static screen to the next.

A user should be able to experience a model of the deliverable functionality that is as close to the real experience (functionally, not visually) as possible. Otherwise, what are we testing and how valuable can our observations really be?

Prototype (dictionary definition):

1. To create an experimental model of (something).
2. One of the first units manufactured of a product, which is tested so that the design can be changed if necessary before the product is manufactured commercially
3. The original or model on which something is based or formed.
4. Someone or something that serves to illustrate the typical qualities of a class; model; exemplar:?"She is the prototype of a student activist"
5. Something analogous to another thing of a later period:?"a Renaissance prototype of our modern public housing".

The purpose (and value) of UX Prototyping: A prototype is not just a piece of software or code. It's a representative, testable model of the functional elements of a solution, and that can be physical, verbal, digital, process, interaction etc, and nearly always a combination of many of these. Prototypes allow us to create the functional complexities of a use case, for given user types, with all of the what-if affordances (not just the happy path) so that:

1. We can be sure we have allowed for and enabled all the functional outcomes (use cases) and gracefully dealt with the what-if scenarios (unhappy paths)
2. We can usability test and prove, or disprove, that the use cases can be functionally and intuitively delivered to the users satisfaction and to the conclusion/goal of the use case
3. We can deliver a functionally working prototype of the solution that works (to the user's requirements and satisfaction) so that the senior stakeholder or PO can sign it off for development, confident that we are building and delivering something that works, is comprehensive and that users will want
4. We can extract all the required user stories in to the back log with no assumptions or missing requirements, removing the need for code iterations
5. We can test with users, without them being diverted or distracted by the fact that it is not real

Good prototypes reproduce the functional experience in all its complexity, so that we can be sure we deliver on all the use cases, be sure we have simplified the solution as far as possible and there are no loose ends that will piss off the user and require unnecessary, expensive 'product support' when it goes live. So we can be sure we have handled all of the functional deltas elegantly.

Good prototypes prove we did good UX and lead to great solutions.

So, you need a good prototyping tool to do all this and here I want to immediately mention that we are not including things like voice interaction environments. At least not in this post.

What's the right UX prototyping tool?

I'm hearing a lot about Figma these days and I was going to write a comparative post about it and Axure but The UX Collective and C.J Toscano beat me to it. So, never one to reinvent the wheel...

The post is called Axure vs Figma: The logical choice for dynamic and complex prototypes . Please read it. It is circumspect and excellent.

I had initially ignored Figma, as most of the "UX Prototyping tools" on the market are little more than glorified visual design tools (some aren't even glorified). They're created by lazy companies, happy to profiteer on the back of UX, fit for little more than creating multiple visual screens that enable you to click-to-the-next-visual.

And the propaganda doesn't end there. They back this up with blog post after shiny marketing campaign. They even give 'free' training in these visual design tools. They ought to be free, they're not enabling you to actually fulfil the purpose of prototyping.

After much testing, I use the only tool that comes close: Axure.

And before I listen to anyone say "But Axure is hard to use" (please say this in the voice of a whining little girl and stomp your feet), I would remind you that it's our f%&#ing job to make the complex seem simple and that requires:

1. Skill
2. Effort
3. And appropriately capable tools - of which there is really only one that fills the "Purpose of Prototyping" bill. And that is Axure.

Life and the problems within it, that we as UXers are tasked with solving, presents complex, interactive, dependency based challenges and experiences.

UX solves complex problems (unless it is undermined). You cannot solve worthwhile complexities or significant business and social user challenges by drawing some pretty pictures that start at picture 1 and click all the way through to picture 20. Those aren't prototypes, they're clickable screen flows at best and provide no more value than one big screen flow. Why waste money paying a UXer if that's all you're going to produce.

One of the things I regularly find myself reminding delivery teams of is that the happy path solution isn't really the problem (once you've done proper UX research), its the unhappy paths that require time, attention to detail and elegance to solve in a usable way that provides satisfactory user experience, not just dead ends that leave you cursing the developers (and its not even their fault). Or that leaves you feeling like the experience has just given you the digital finger because someone at the company couldn't be bothered to actually give the problem any thought beyond how pretty it will look and how quickly they could deliver it.

Delivery teams are very reluctant to even consider all the unhappy paths, never mind address them. But unhappy paths are the difference between a mediocre products and a great products. Part of this is that they are working to deliver as quickly as possible (see Speed is not the metric of success blog post) and stopping to think, to consider all the possible unhappy paths, seems like a huge task. Its not! Its a critical task! But luckily they have UX to do all that thinking (if they will let them do their job).

Axure definitely needs to address some things soon:

• Voice interaction solutions
• Some of the conditional logic capabilities,
• They need to make training more formal/accessible (though they have a great support community)
• They need to eat a little more of their own dog food: ask their UX users for some UX usability feedback (its not the best user experience I've ever had and that would be less noticeable if it weren't an actual UX tool)
• And the other faux-prototyping tools like Adobe XD, Sketch, InVision etc, give a great lesson in good marketing . Axure - get your marketing together!

However, it is still far in a way the only prototyping tool that allows you to create prototypes that fulfil their remit, duty, obligation, mission, intent, objective, scope, expectation, proposition and premise. Just to be clear.

The reason Axure isn't more popular with UX designers is because it's not a design tool, its a UX tool and many of the UX community are actually just "UI/UX unicorns" so they don't carry out the full spectrum of UX and want tools that are as close to Photoshop as possible. Unfortunately that also means in their capabilities. More and more organisations are approaching us (especially in the last 2 years) asking for full UX, not glorified visual design. They want, nay demand, measurable value and efficacy - things that can only be delivered by full service UX (UX research, UX functional architecture and, unavoidably, at least some Service Design). So Axure will become more and more popular as its the only tool that enables full UX. Start learning it if you don't already use it.

We're starting to turn a corner in UX. Organisations are starting to see and demand the value of modern UX and we can all be a part of that, but you need to do the right work and use the right tools to do so.

The truth is, if you really do UX you will already know this. Don't be dissuaded by the seeming lack of simplicity in Axure (Photoshop is waaaaaay harder to learn) or anyone who tells you its only for 'hard-core' UXers. It is powerful and comprehensive. It's extensible and has a great community of UXers who genuinely want to make the world a better place and know that it can't be done with other tools that are little more than digital crayon boxes.

If you're going to produce a great solution you need to be able to build great prototypes that comprehensively replicate all of the behaviours and states of that solution so you can fully test it works and "change it if necessary before the product is manufactured commercially". Otherwise why even waste money pretending to do UX? Just go ahead and deliver the prettiest, quickest solution straight away and use Illustrator. At least you'll be doing a little bit of Agile right (fail fast...)

Please address all angry letters to UX Sanctuary, care of the complaints department.