Prototyping Workshop @USC

Prototyping Workshop @ UXSC (USC)

June 30, 2015

I recently had the honor along with @josevader to present to students and professors about UX and prototyping methodologies. We kicked things off by talking about the basics of prototyping and why it's important to validate concepts.

We looked at some of the most popular tools at our disposal from enterprise products like Axure through to more affordable tools such as Proto.io and UXPin. We not only discussed the different tools, but the pro's and cons of each and which tool was good for which platform. 

Once we had ran through the tools it was time to get a little more hands on with the audience. We took an existing design issue and wanted to run the students though a number of  UX techniques to quickly test assumptions and validate them. We did a mini journey mapping exercise to find the pain points within the applications experience, user stories, white board sketching and how to do quick guerilla testing. 

After a few sketching exercises using my mobile sketch template, We took one of the students sketches and translated it to POP app. From there we took the idea to proto.io to build a simple working prototype of the experience. Amazingly we had time to even test the prototype on usertesting.com and analyze the results with everyone. Whilst the testing results were uploading I had the opportunity to show the students how to set up a mobile usability lab (Hart 360).

This was a huge success and the long hours we put into preparation paid off. We took questions at the end and before we left we were invited back to be mentors for the design-a-thon sponsored by UXPA.