Abstract
Prototyping is one of the core activities of User-Centered Design (UCD) processes and an integral component of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research. For many years, prototyping was synonym of paper-based mockups and only more recently we can say that dedicated tools for supporting prototyping activities really reach the market. In this paper, we propose to analyze the evolution of prototyping tools for supporting the development process of interactive systems. For that, this paper presents a review of the literature. We analyze the tools proposed by academic community as a proof of concepts and/or support to research activities. Moreover, we also analyze prototyping tools that are available in the market. We report our observation in terms of features that appear over time and constitute milestones for understating the evolution of concerns related to the development and use of prototyping tools. This survey covers publications published since 1988 in some of the main HCI conferences and 118 commercial tools available on the web. The results enable a brief comparison of characteristics present in both academic and commercial tools, how they have evolved, and what are the gaps that can provide insights for future research and development.
Highlights
Every project is unique in terms of the business and technical problems that arise, the priorities assigned to it, the resources required, the environment in which it operates, the culture of the stakeholders, and the project manager’s attitude used to guide and control project activities
We propose to analyze the evolution of prototyping tools for supporting the development process of interactive systems
We report our observation in terms of features that appear over time and constitute milestones for understating the evolution of concerns related to the development and use of prototyping tools
Summary
Every project is unique in terms of the business and technical problems that arise, the priorities assigned to it, the resources required, the environment in which it operates, the culture of the stakeholders, and the project manager’s attitude used to guide and control project activities. Prototyping Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) is considered as one of the most important activities in a User-Centered Design (UCD) process as a mean to investigate alternative design solutions. In early phases of the development process, paper and pencil mockups are a suitable alternative for prototyping user interfaces [2]. They are inexpensive and yet suitable presentation models that can be used to communicate basic ideas with users about the design. Paper-based prototypes remain useful, the passage from paper to software is error-prone as paper-based prototypes are informal descriptions that can be subject to interpretations (i.e. ambiguity in the recognition of the graphical elements) and they might provide insufficient information to describe some design constraints (ex. precise size and position of objects)
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