brightly colored food

From LucDesk

Wouldn’t it be great to find out what users (and marketing) want before you start coding? Paper prototyping lets you do just that. While it may seem counterintuitive to test an interface without using a computer, paper prototyping lets you get maximum feedback for minimum effort. After a few usability tests with a paper prototype, you’ll have confidence that you’re implementing the right thing.

Good article by Carlolyn Snyder on paper prototyping - considers the pros and cons and shows some shots of prototypes.

I must say that IBM is publishing some pretty good articles these days, and even the undercooked ones (a previous one on modal dialogues didn’t do much for me — this discussion has been ongoing since the days of Larry Tesler at Apple, and it was a rather cursory/anecdotal article) still have nice formatting: note the contents sidebar, introductory summary, resources at the end, subheads, conclusion, use of images, and overall writing style. Someone publishing articles online could learn a bit from their presentation….