Sketchboards and Prototypes: Agile methods for better and faster UX solutions
Agile cannot replace a holistic user experience vision – something that takes into account design strategy and objectives.
At Adaptive Path, we have been experimenting with a technique that we call sketchboards. We get everyone on the team to participate in a process based on rapid, low-fi techniques like sketching and collaging to iterate ideas and move quickly into prototyping.
When combined, sketchboards and prototypes give everyone on the team a strong foundation to build products that provide focused, beneficial, well-designed experiences for the people who use them.
In this hands-on tutorial, we will show you how sketchboards work and take you through a process of creating your own. We’ll also show you how to determine what ideas from the sketchboard are the most essential and suitably granular for taking into prototype development. We will address how to select the smallest possible unit to start prototyping, how to focus on the tricky features, and how to determine what key stakeholders need to see to really “get” your product.
Not just for designers – sketchboards work best when the entire team gets involved – so anyone can participate in this tutorial.
You will learn:
- how to run faster, higher quality design iterations that encourage heavy collaboration from designers, technologist, and business people
- how to explore many ideas before investing time in building them
- how to employ sketching and collaging activities to give design the same speed and focus that agile gives to coding
- how to determine the fidelity required for your prototype(s)
- how to determine what’s the essential functionality to prototype
This 2.5 hour tutorial will be structured roughly as follows:
- Speaker intro - 5min
- Sketchboard Lecture - 30min
- Sketchboard Activity - 45min
- Discussion - 15min
- Prototype Lecture - 30min
- Prototype Activity - 30min
- Discussion - 15min
- Q & A - 10min