Prototyping: A Practitioner's Guide [Color] [Paperback]

Todd Zaki Warfel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 16, 2009

Prototyping is a great way to communicate the intent of a design both clearly and effectively. Prototypes help you to flesh out design ideas, test assumptions, and gather real-time feedback from users. With this book, Todd Zaki Warfel shows how prototypes are more than just a design tool by demonstrating how they can help you market a product, gain internal buy-in, and test feasibility with your development team.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Prototyping: A Practitioner's Guide is a terrific and comprehensive review of both the prototyping process and the tools involved. I found that the book both validated my experience in prototyping and provided new techniques to try out, with many "Aha!" moments in both respects. --Jeff Rankin

About the Author

Todd Zaki Warfel is a founding partner at Messagefirst, where he focuses on design-research for consumer and b2b products. A recognized leader in the design-research and usability fields, Todd speaks regularly at universities and industry conferences and contributes to industry publications. With over 16 years of industry experience, degrees in English, Creative Writing, and Cognitive Psychology, and a background in Product Design, Todd has been fortunate enough to create over 15 industry first products. Todd is a storyteller by nature and is rarely short on details. He is an active member in a number of industry communities and organizations, including the Information Architecture Institute, IxDA, and UPA. He has done work with a variety of clients including: Albertsons, AT&T Wireless, Bankrate, Bank of America, Comcast, Cornell University, Dell, IntraLinks, Palm, Sallie Mae, Splenda, SBC, SUNY, and Tufts University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 197 pages
• Publisher: Rosenfeld Media; 1st edition (November 16, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933820217
• ISBN-13: 978-1933820217
• Product Dimensions: 1 x 6 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #334,586 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive and many "Aha!" moments, December 3, 2009

By 

William J. Rankin "User Interface Designer" (Boulder, CO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Prototyping: A Practitioner's Guide (Paperback)

"Prototyping: A Practitioner's Guide" is a terrific and comprehensive review of both the prototyping process and the tools involved. There's really very little with which to find fault. I found that the book both validated my experience in prototyping and provided new techniques to try out, with many "Aha!" moments in both respects. The inclusion of case studies illustrating the techniques provide additional perspective and make the techniques more "real". The review of each prototyping technique/tool, whether paper or software-based, includes links to additional resources like toolkits, sample images, and the like - these would be especially useful to someone just getting started with a particular tool. Speaking as a designer who's typically relied on HTML prototypes and Visio, I must say my interest in Adobe Fireworks and, to a lesser extent, Axure is piqued. I think any UI/UX/IX designer, of any level of experience, would get something out of this book. Not that it would be useful only to them - analysts and software engineers will benefit from it as well.

A few very small issues:

* Early in the book, Mr. Warfel defines wireframes. I personally don't see why a wireframe can't depict flow - to me a wireframe is just a basic representation of the UI used to depict basic layout, flow, and interaction patterns. So, I think we simply differ slightly on the definition. I do like the term "narrative prototype" better and may start using that in place of "wireframe" - it is more descriptive.

* One issue with using common backgrounds in Visio prototypes is that you can't do a "select all" and then copy + paste the result into documentation, as all the background elements won't be copied. You can do a screen cap - but that takes a bit longer. So, just something to be aware of when using Visio.

* The author asks what is the point of using a virtual machine + Windows-only prototyping tools on a Mac. I'd say the point is simply that if, you do only own a Mac or Linux-based machine, you don't have to purchase an additional computer. Just a matter of practicality really.

* In the usability section - the author talks about the testing tool Morea, meaning "Morae" - a Techsmith product.

Again, these are small issues in an otherwise terrific book!

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Good and the Bad, April 5, 2010

By 

G. Barber (Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Prototyping: A Practitioner's Guide (Paperback)

I'm an advocate of prototyping. I'll even go so far as to recommend that wireframing be reduce to just sketching in favour of prototyping. Still prototyping in a UX environment can sometimes be one of those things that you don't always get to practice when you would like to.

This is where Rosenfeld's book Prototyping - A Practitioner's Guide by Todd Zaki Warfel can fill in some of those nagging holes.

Now I enjoyed this book. I'm firmly in the audience demographic that this book is pitched at, which is good. Todd presents a concise overview of the art and science of prototyping, the upside and the downside are equally balanced within the book. That is what makes it so refreshing to read. However...

The first 7 chapters deal with a recommend guide to implementation of prototyping, including paper prototyping. This is well presented concise and worthwhile. As is the last 2 chapters on HTML prototyping and an overview on prototype testing. All these chapters are just what you need for the basics of prototyping, while still offering some extra detail for the experienced UX professional.

However there are a number of points within the book that I found just didn't gel well with me. Now I have nothing against Todd, I'm sure we have a lot of passionate view points in common. It's just part of this book feels wrong to me.

You see in the middle of the book are a series of chapters that discuss how to prototype with various desktop applications.

I really would love to know why there is an extra four chapters stuffed into this book reviewing the very basics of using PowerPoint, Visio, Fireworks and Axure Pro as prototyping tools.

These chapters are nothing more than a step wise guide to using the applications, a few minor points for prototyping with them.

Discussing any software products that aren't generic is going to be a danger, as it immediately dates the book, considering the book was published in November 2009, it's already dated.
For instance where is MS-SketchFlow, the current UX darling of the hour. Maybe we have a case of the Publisher forcing Todd's hand on this one, I hope not. It's as if these extra chapters have been added in to stuff the page count up.

You know this makes me wonder if Rosenfeld are really appealing to the UX professional or some other audience I don't know off.

If the first section of the book wasn't so damn useful I would have give this book a 2 star rating for these filler chapters. If it has been published without these chapters I would rate this book as a must buy (4-4.5 stars), a concise guide to getting started with prototyping. Sadly however for some reason it was published with these filler chapters so the 3 star rating stands.

The book starts where it should with a wonderfully presented case for why anyone in the design process should be using prototyping, which can be very easily used on general business as well. I remember reading this chapter with a big smile on my face, you can see that Todd has had to trot out these rebuffs time and time again to the same old anti prototype augments.

As expected the book deals with the prototyping process, it does this well, however I felt that this area could have done with a little more detail, nothing major, just a little more of Todds words. One interesting aspect was the presentation of the five types of prototyping and the eight guiding principles, most of which are fairly common sense. However it does help to state them to remind people new and old to the prototyping ways.

I'm not going to review those four rogue chapters...

The chapters on paper and html prototyping could also have been a little longer with a few more examples, on the pitfalls of the methods and ways to overcome them, still they where handy universal references for using prototyping.

Finally the book wraps with a discussion on prototype testing. Now this is not your usual user testing chapter. Sure it does talk about user testing for 8 odd pages, but the real gold here is in the list of common mistakes and ways to overcome them. This type of practice advice is invaluable to any UX professional.

If you don't have a prototyping guide, yes go out and buy this book. You can always skip those deadwood chapters, they add nothing to the book and you will not miss them.

However if you already have a prototyping reference, I would consider against buying this book, unless you really want it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great book for beginners; Ok book for seasoned practitioners, March 27, 2010

By 

E. Olmon (Denver, CO) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Prototyping: A Practitioner's Guide (Paperback)

In this review, I'm going to talk first about the book itself and then give some comments that apply (so far) to all books published by Rosenfeld.

It's difficult to rate this because the rating varies between the audience. Beginning Prototypers: 5 stars. Experienced Prototypers: 3-ish stars. Personally, I like the book, find it useful, and certain parts of this book will be useful for future reference.

Prototyping: A Practitioner's Guide can be thought of in two main parts. First, Chapters 1-4 (inclusive) discuss some background on prototyping, general considerations, basically things to think about and know about prototyping in general. Chapters 5-11 discuss specific tools used to develop prototypes, and a very basic how to use those tools to develop prototypes. Finally, Chapter 12 discusses testing the prototype.

People new to prototyping will probably find the most value in this book. People who are seasoned practitioners in prototyping will probably find the first half useful (theory and practices), but not so much the second half (tools).

Each chapter on tools gives a quick "score card" (quick view of strength and weaknesses at a glance), discusses some strengths of the tool as well as some weaknesses. Additionally, a quick and simple step-by-step how to make a <something> prototype for each tool is given.

One tool I find to be conspicuously absent is Adobe Flash. The author states that he chose not to discuss Flash because there are already a multitude of books dedicated to Flash. While I agree Flash is extremely well documented and there are many books on the topic, I think that Flash's popularity as a prototyping tool warrants at least a short chapter and discussion on using Flash specifically to prototype designs.

Reading books published by Rosenfeld is a very pleasant experience (I love Rosenfeld Media, they are my favorite publisher due to my user experience with their ebooks). The books are published in both ebook form and paper book form. The ebook, a pdf, was obviously designed to be read as an ebook. The font is large, clear, and easy to read on a variety of screen sizes. There are links within to book to relevant places online (e.g. All images link to a high-quality, CC licensed version on Flickr). These are truly the best laid out and thought out ebooks I have seen to date. Hopefully Rosenfeld starts a trend. The hard copy versions are printed on high-quality paper and are small enough to fit in a medium sized purse/bag.

All Rosenfeld books (that I've read) begin with how to use the book and frequently asked questions. The first chapter focuses on why you should employ a method (in this case prototyping) and why it's important--in addition to being informative, this first chapter seems to give the reader an arsenal for communicating with decision makers who might appreciate a solid rationale to spend time and money on whatever the topic of the book is.