The downfall of paper prototyping

Despite the strength of modern design tools, we still keep a pencil and paper in our arsenal. Sketching is a great way to think about ideas spatially. They’re quick and cheap to produce and encourage rapid exploration. Scribbling down your ideas is also accessible; anyone can share ideas with people in their team before a designer starts finalising their UI designs.

As ‘creative’ people, designers can sometimes become too focused on making their sketches pretty. I’m guilty myself; after all, gorgeous sketches can make a fine addition to a portfolio case study. But sometimes this behaviour can veer into the time-wasting territory that is paper prototyping.

What are paper prototypes?

Paper prototypes are a way to test your design concepts without mocking up the interface digitally. You sketch how you imagine the screens in an interface to look, then you can move the screens around depending on ‘user input’.

There’s a difference between a sketch and a paper prototype. Sketches are rough and haphazard, used as a way to record your thoughts: paper prototypes are a design asset, crafted and perfected. The more complex ones can be moved and folded to simulate interaction.