The Interactive Ideas Blog

When I was a account manager for an interactive agency, I got as much project feedback from my clients as I could. However, after facing consistent rework and headaches, we made prototyping part of our standard process.  As a result, I also learned to educate the clients by reviewing four main points about the prototyping process. I’ve recently learned that many agencies don’t clarify this process for their clients, frequently resulting in confusion and misunderstandings. Depending on the needs of the interactive project, you’ll often have to review the prototype with your client. If your clients are not as technically savvy as you, they may need clarification on the following points about creating a website / web application prototype:

1. Why a prototype is necessary
2. How to use the prototype
3. What is expected from them as the client
4. What are the next steps after the prototype.

If you find yourself in a situation like the one I just described, I’d like make it easier for you to explain to your clients the prototyping process with ProtoShare. Below are some common scenarios and answers to the topics (mere suggestions from personal experiences). Feel free to add your own tactics and experiences in the comments area below..

1. Why a prototype is necessary

Client: “I’m have a tight budget and deadline, so I don’t understand why this extra step is necessary. We already talked about my needs for the site/application. Can’t you just take my ideas and build what I need?”

Response: Yes, we could actually start building the site/application for you. But because you ARE on a tight budget and deadline, it’s best that we begin with the layout of the sitemap and pages to ensure we’re going in the right direction. We need to make the most of your investment by making sure that 1) We truly understand your needs, 2) We provide you with a proper solution to meet those needs, and 3) You and your end-users will be satisfied with the final product.  A good comparison is that of a house. Not only would we need blueprints to create the foundation to know where to build the walls, but we’d also need to know if it is important for you to have the garage next to the kitchen. And what if you decide you want 12’ high walls instead of 10’? You need to determine these things prior to building the house. Trying to move walls, redirecting a driveway, and tearing down construction once you’ve already started building is much more costly than if properly planned from the start. One “small” change can have a ripple effect throughout the whole structure.  Well, it’s the same with a website/web application. Making changes later in the process is much more costly because valuable development work has been done, and altering it is much more difficult than changing a drag-and-drop prototype.

2. How to use the prototype
Client: “What do I do with this thing? It’s just a grouping of boxes and lines and certainly does not look like a website. I also don’t like gray. Where’s the color? And I don’t know what “lorem ipsum” means; my site/application should be written in English.”

Response: You are correct. Right now, it doesn’t look much like a finished website/application. Let’s go back to the house planning we just discussed. The blueprints of a house look nothing like the actual house. However, when looking at the blueprints, you understand where the master bedroom is, where the windows and doors are, and how wide the hallways will be. We are doing the same thing with your website/application.
We need you to review the page and interact with the layout, navigation, graphics, interactive forms, copy placement, etc. Will this make sense to your users? Will this layout help achieve your goals? Does the flow of pages make sense to you? How you and your customers interact with the site is key to the success of the project. When we answer these questions, we can move into a more high-fidelity prototype.

3. What is expected from the client

Client: “Okay, I understand the comparison to building a house. What else do you need from me? How do I know what to look at and when?”

Response: Once we’re ready to show you part of the prototype, you’ll receive an email with a link into ProtoShare. You have your own login to access your site/application. Click through the pages as if you were navigating through a real site. Because your time is valuable and we cannot always meet or personally discuss the pages or changes, you have the ability to access your prototype when it is convenient for you. On the prototype, you may also find annotations (our notes about decisions) or red pins that are discussion points. If you see something you want to comment on, or reply to, just click on the red pin; or create a new topic and drag out a red pin.  We have access to all your feedback and if you have more detailed questions, or if we need clarification, we can schedule a time to talk. What’s important is that you are involved in the planning process upfront, ensuring that the project is done on time, on budget, and meet all goals.
(ProtoShare also has a brief video tutorial showing your clients how to work in the tool.)

4. What are the next steps

Client: “So what happens next?”

Response: (this will obviously vary from project to project and depends on your company’s process) Since we’ve reached agreement on an interactive prototype of your project, we’ll begin building your site/application. We may need to do some user testing.  Because we engaged you early in the process, we have a clear understanding of your project’s unique requirements. And we should be able to deliver with a minimum of changes and rework, meeting your budget and deadline.

Andrea Fidel,
ProtoShare Marketing Intern & MBA student at University of Portland

We get a lot of questions and inquiries about ways to work more quickly in ProtoShare. One of the most common questions involves keyboard shortcuts, particularly in the wireframe editor. Did you know that ProtoShare has nearly 40 keyboard shortcuts?

A few popular keyboard shortcuts:

Duplicate a component or grouping of components on the canvas:
Alt + Click and Drag

Cut, Copy, and Paste a component or grouping of components on the canvas, or from one page or project to another:
Ctrl (PC) / Cmd (Mac) + x / c / v

You’ll find all ProtoShare keyboard shortcuts, and more, in the User Guide, located under Help in the application menu.  You can also download a PDF of the  shortcuts to have a handy reference sheet. And get ready for an easier and faster prototyping experience.

At ProtoShare, we strongly believe in low-fidelity wireframes and prototypes. After all, wireframes aren't the end goal, they are merely a tool to use in a larger process. Most of the time, simple wireframes kickstart the needed discussion to make decisions. There are times, however, when simple doesn't cut it. Sometimes you need to build out a specific feature more completely to adequately experience and discuss it. At these times, wireframing applications turn into limitations because you can only build what their component palettes allow you to build. That is if you aren't using ProtoShare and the HTML Sandbox.

The ProtoShare front-end is all HTML/JavaScript, not Flash. Consequently, this allows users to do some unique things, like view the prototype in a browser, or use CSS to change the appearance of components. Now with the HTML Sandbox, ProtoShare gives you the ability to create and add any component they can think up and code. And with the proliferation of JavaScript libraries like Ext (which we use to build ProtoShare), YUI, jQuery, mooTools, etc it is not too much work to find a pre-built component and modify it to fit your needs.

The video below shows some of the possibilities you now have with the Sandbox:

So, how does it work? The HTML Sandbox is currently under our "Experimental" components at the bottom of the palette in the editor. Select it like any other component, click the Source Code field in the properties to open the HTML editor, and type or paste in your code. Close the HTML editor and switch back to Prototype mode, or click the Interactive Mode button and check it out.

Below is some sample code you can use to test it. This is a very simple example of doing a basic on-the-fly form validation where it highlights blank entries.

<html>
<head>
     <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js"></script>

     <style type="text/css">
          .error { background-color: #FFD2D2; }
          div, input { font-size:11px; font-family:Verdana; padding:5px; }
          input { padding:2px; border:1px solid black; }
     </style>
</head>

<body>
     <form name="user" action="#" onsubmit="return false;">
          <div>Name <input type="text" id="name"/> <span></span></div>
          <div>Email <input type="text" id="email"/> <span></span></div>
          <div><input type="submit" value="Submit" /></div>
     </form>

     <script type="text/javascript">
          $('input').blur( function() {
               if( $(this).val() == '' ) {
                    $(this).parent().addClass( 'error' );
                    $(this).next('span').html(' this cannot be blank');
               } else {
                    $(this).parent().removeClass( 'error' );
                    $(this).next('span').html('');
               }
          });
          $('form').submit( function() {
               $('#name').blur();
               $('#email').blur();
          });
     </script>

</body>
</html>

Notice in this example we're using the jQuery library hosted on code.google.com. If you want to use some jQuery (or other JavaScript library) plugin you find, there will probably be additional files necessary. You can either paste the source code into the HTML editor, or you can upload the files to the Asset Library and link to them.

You upload JavaScript and CSS files to the Asset Library just as you would any image asset. Once the files are uploaded, click on a file to see the full path to the file. These links take the form of /Asset/<directory>/<file>. For example if I were going to use a jQuery library called accordion.js, I would upload it to the Asset Library and my HTML Sandbox code would look something like this:

<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/Assets/js/accordion.js"></script>
</head>

...

Please remember this is still an experimental component. We consider this an advanced component as you need to know a fair amount about HTML and JavaScript to get the most out of it. We're very excited about the possibilities here, and we think you'll be too. We'd also like to hear your thoughts about the HTML Sandbox. Please leave us some comments here describing how you are using it, or how you would like to use it.

ProtoShare 3.0 debuted yesterday, Sunday, 5 April. As you’ve probably noticed, there are many big changes from the previous version. Since we ran into more pre-release testing than anticipated, we are a bit behind on our video tutorials. However, rest assured that Dave DeAngelis, Director of Product Experience, is hard at work on creating and updating new video tutorials for ProtoShare 3.0. As they become available, we will post them on the support page; we anticipate a complete update of all video tutorials by the end of this week.

To see the first of the new tutorials, click the image at left. The tutorial covers the creating of rich internet functionality and setting of page states. As noted in the last blog post, there is also the general ProtoShare 3.0 preview that we posted on YouTube last week. Thanks again for all your feedback and enthusiasm.