Rapid PowerPoint Prototypes for Ajax and Rich Interactions

Bob Moll, Thursday, May 11, 2006 @ 3:02 pm

As applications take the web from static pages to dynamic screens, how can the designer effectively mock up and vet early-stage dynamic screen designs? PowerPoint provides one possible vehicle.

We have found PowerPoint to be effective because it has very easy to use animation, screen transition and click-through capabilities. While the prototypes we produced were not highly polished, they were highly effective in vetting the ideas for a new website IA with three key groups: stakeholders, developers and graphic designers.

One specific effect that was used was the screen transition called “Wipe”. The Wipe effect (available in up, down, left and right versions) enables easy simulation of things like sliding drawers. You simply make a slide with the closed state of the drawer followed by a slide with the open state of the drawer and apply the Wipe transition.

Though the technique is simple, it is quite effective at communicating the screen ideas to users and developers.

Topics: Best Practices, Ideation, Prototyping, Requirements Visualization

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