Paper, scissors, computer?

Posted by: Martin Chapman Fromm | 13 June 2007

A couple of us from Mando Group recently attended the intensive NN/g Usability Seminar in London. On stage, Jakob Nielsen lead a band of his merry experts in disseminating their knowledge of (amongst other things) user testing, prototyping, and usability field studies.

By far, the highlight of the three-day event was day two’s paper-prototyping afternoon. A room of 100+ international delegates all forced into caring sharing groups and ordered to redesign and user test a Britney Spears diary application!/

Fast-forward to Mando HQ (several deadlines and weeks later), and those that attended the seminar had decided to become Jakob et al to the rest of Mando.

So, half the company eagerly attended a lunchtime session and were tasked with creating a prototype of a (shhhh!) top-secret web site, in 45 minutes!

So, sit yourselves down in groups of four, listen to me and Jo talk about how to do this stuff, watch a video of how to do it (dodgy YouTube affair) and, taking your essential usability supplies box, off you go!

45 minutes, discussions start. 30 minutes, discussions rage, 20 minutes, discussions die down, 15 minutes (and the announcement of 15 minutes left) and panic! Paper and sticky notes flying. Scissors snap furiously, gluesticks get stuck. 5 minutes left... Aargh! Who can draw boxes? Finished! And there, four new paper-prototyped home pages adorned with illuminus pink, orange and yellow stickies.

Now for the testing...

At this point, let me backtrack a little. Whilst in the London seminar, a lovely guy called Pierre from Belgium was the computer. Anyone who's played the paper prototype game before knows 'the computer' role. To expand: when a user tests a paper prototype, one of the group becomes a human computer. The computer presents new menus, dialogues, form elements, and new screens to the user. The computer cannot speak (not even to say ‘no’ or 'non' in Pierre's case), but he/she can use an hourglass printout to indicate their confusion!

I jest. Whilst it is 'the computer' role that caused the most amusement, it's superb how engrossed the user got into testing a paper prototype and dismissed 'the computer' as an er... computer, within 30 seconds.

Back at HQ, the user testing threw up a few obvious and not-so-obvious flaws in the 45-minute designs. But, the magic of rapid prototyping is on the designers’ side. After less than an hour of scrappy paper work nobody is going to mind a major flaw or two in the design. In fact, mistakes are positively encouraged! What better way to counter the 'can we just move that over there?' proposition than with, 'well, we tried that and the user just didn't get it!'

Posted in: Creative Business