With pidoco’s web-based prototyping software, interaction designers and web developers can save valuable time, easily integrate other stakeholders and build better interfaces for the internet.

Rapid Paper Prototyping has already been established as THE way to get a web-application started. The basic concepts of the layout will be put on paper and tossed around in the team. This prototype will then be put through a refinement process by implementing feedback from different stake holders. This paper prototype will finally act as a rough guide for the whole project – from beginning to the end (but is there a real end?). Some screen-designers even use these very limited paper prototypes for running usability tests. Retrieving problems in the use cases in the prototyping phase can save a lot of money, since later changes in the so called ‘finished’ web project are minimized.

However, there are several drawbacks to Rapid Paper Prototyping.  Paper prototypes are difficult to add to the document servers and also difficult to share between team-members. Scanning paper prototypes and making them ‘clickable’ for web testing is also a time consuming task as we all know!

That is why many companies create their sketches directly in MS PowerPoint or MS Visio and have them distributed to the relevant sources. True, that way one can share the screens more effectively but it is not really more dynamic than making copies of a piece of paper handing it to the team. The prototypes still do not show the real capabilities for test user excitement:  links, dynamic menus and work-flows etc. cannot be reproduced effectively and need to be explained individually in long paragraphs. Again, more time and effort has to be invested to get the message across.
A small company from Berlin, Germany has noticed this problem and made it their duty to tackle it by providing a really nice web-based interface design software.

In either case, the media world relies more than any other industry on personal networks. As a result we can see project teams with people from different backgrounds, professions and sometimes even different native languages (speaking of off-shoring). New communication trends and technologies emerging every day (just remember the introduction of social media) very specialized and always new skills are constantly needed. Therefore today, the task for project managers is not only to know a lot of qualified freelancers from the latest technologies, but to get them together and make sure they collaborate like one single well lubricated machine. To deliver projects on time and on budget, the team needs to communicate well, since the somewhat binding corporate culture does not exist.

But the question remains up to which point the cost reduction through outsourcing and hiring professionals on demand, is compensating the increasing cost for communication in such projects – or how to constrain the rising cost of communication. But we suggest not worrying too much, since there are some nice tools for online collaboration especially for the media guys.

This completely web-based tool helps interaction designers to communicate the work-flow concepts and specs (as interactive interface mockups) of a new website to developers, customers and other stake holders in the extended project team. All communication takes place online (just a web browser is needed) and all team members can collaborate in real-time (or asynchronously) on the same wireframes, tracking and influencing the different stages of development. What makes it special for screen designers; it’s not just collaboration, but also a great wireframing and usability testing tool. It basically transfers the idea of rapid paper prototyping to the web and adds a lot of helpful testing, communication and collaboration features.

This trade-off really asks for a fast visualization method and therefore some clever designers and programmers invented Rapid Paper Prototyping. Quick and dirty interface prototypes are sketched with pen and paper to be tested (and re-designed) with all the limitations physical paper brings along.

But today, in the digital age, Rapid Paper Prototyping has grown up! The era of digital interface prototyping has begun. With digital wireframing tools you can create interface mockups by drag and drop from prefabricated stencils (elements like checkboxes, navigation bars etc.). Unlike paper, these digital interface prototypes are completely interactive with animated navigation, real type-in form fields and linking between all pages through buttons and text links.