Augmenting Interactivity of Low-fidelity Paper Prototypes

Abstract

Todays user interface design is characterized by the rapid and iterative design process. This implies a user test in each iteration steps with a prototype because the feedbacks from the user test lead the increasing in quality of user interface. Through the iteration steps, many types of prototypes are used for user tests. For instance, in an early phase of design process, low-fidelity prototypes are used because it is cheap in cost and easy to make. Among the low-fidelity prototypes, a wireframe has been widely used in the early phase of user interface design process. However, because it lacks interactivity in usage, it is rarely possible to give a realistic experience to user. This thesis describes the design, implementation, and user evaluation of a sketch-based prototyping tool that augments interactivity of low-fidelity prototype. Through the literature review, we researched the limitations of current prototyping tools. And then, we obtained findings that provide design implications in developing a prototyping system in the preliminary study. Based on these studies, we designed the prototyping tool for mobile application user interface prototype. The tool consists of a mobile application and Neo1 digital pen and template papers. Designers draw a wireframe prototype on template papers with Neo1 digital pen, and then convert the prototype into mobile device for running. The pen-and-paper interaction technology, called .Code technology, lets designers with quick and easy drawing and linking user interfaces. With boxing, anchoring, and linking interaction, designers make the links between user interface screens that represented on a mobile application. Finally, we present the user evaluation results. We conducted user evaluation with eight participants with two prototyping tasks. We collected the user feedbacks in-task session and after-task session. These results provide both positive and negative results that our tool is quite useful for interactive prototyping and still our tool has some drawbacks in interaction techniques to refine in the future research.