It sounds like you went through a tremendous learning experience.

How much did my test cost? Well, I “paid” Gavin with a packet of biscuits. And essentially I’ve saved probably 2-3 months of time that could have otherwise been completely wasted. That’s a pretty good ratio

“The more you learn the more you understand how little you know”.

Ain’t that the truth. Hopefully I’ll remember to design from the standpoint of complete ignorance from now on, realising that whatever I think I’m probably wrong.

I’ll be interested to hear your argument as to why paper wireframes should die and how this could apply to my project. I’ll keep an eye on your blog.

Thanks for a great comment and I hope to see you at TechMeetup tomorrow. I might be late, but I’ll try and get there.

Not so many years ago was doing web design in an agency where my process involved doing a quick sketch or two before diving straight into a high-fidelity photoshop comp.

I would always get worried about the point where I’d have to call my art director over to review my progress and endure some level of biting criticism of my design skills.

The problem with the situation was that after a few projects I was producing work with the sole objective of impressing the AD. Using visual techniques he favoured, etc.

Of course the reality was that the AD’s preferences were irrelevant, and the areas where we would focus attention would be of little concern to the eventual users of the interfaces.

Later I developed the knowledge that, as an individual designer, I couldn’t possibly understand how a user would interact with the pie-in-the-sky fancies we were building.

Fortunately I eventually got to the point in the organisation where I had the freedom to do some quick and dirty usability testing of my own. And I mean usability testing in the loosest possible terms… Basically just sitting an account director down in-front of an interface and watching him fail to succeed in completing even simple tasks.

As they say, the more you learn the more you understand how little you know. Many designers would take offence at someone questioning their design decision making, citing their education and experience as qualification enough. But I’ve learned that in order to achieve success it’s design research that should lead decision making – the skill of the designer is facilitating the use of techniques to uncover an understanding of the user. To an extent, letting the users design the interface themselves.

I think you made a great decision to sit someone down in-front of a prototype. How much would you say it cost to run the test? And how would you value what you learned in comparison to the cost?

I think rapid iterative prototyping is going to take off in a big way this year. In the last 3 months I’ve been involved in 5 prototyping projects, and all of them have been a fantastic success. I hope to finish a blog post soon about how I prototype with html/css/js, and how paper wireframes as a design tool have to die.