Prototyping at the heart of UCD

• Philosophy: Admit to ourselves that everything will not be perfect the first time
• Make the first iterations as cheap as possibile
  • paper prototyping

Personas on stage

• A scenario is a story about a user using the system
  • inspired directly from task analysis
  • must be concrete, realistic but fictional
• Sets up a situation involving a user with a goal to achieve
  • follows the user through the tasks and subtasks to satisfy the goal
• Using the persona to simulate the goals/tasks is ideal

Personas are all different

Generate alternatives:

• Generating alternative is not necessarily easy. It requires creativity and research. Humans tend to stick to what they know.

• Considering alternatives is important to "break out of the box"

• How to generate alternatives:

  • Flair and creativity: research and synthesis
  • Seek inspiration: look at similar or very different products for good ideas to adopt or bad ideas to reject