I created a paper prototype guided by Carolyn Snyder's excellent book, Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Design and Refine User Interfaces, for a web application used to book occupancy of the road to do maintenance work, etc. It was a lot of fun testing it on my colleagues and a couple of genuine local users but when it got to testing remote users I thought perhaps I'd try to create an online prototype. I started with PowerPoint but found the macros deficient and a couple of things I wanted to do I couldn't. I then ordered Effective Prototyping with Excel by Bergen et al, expecting that their prototypes would involve some basic coding but was disappointed to find they didn't. A programming colleague showed me a couple of very basic code statements in Excel and I realised that with the Control Toolbox widgets, .Visible = True and .Visible = False statements, a couple of If statements, a little googling and a little recording of macros to figure out some code, I could create a pretty workable prototype, albeit only able to handle very specific use cases.
I would appreciate responses on:
I would appreciate responses on:
- the value of this type of prototype
- whether it is possible to have more control over formatting of the Control Toolbox widgets, or, alternatively substitute the Forms toolbar widgets which are more formattable
- other "bits of code" that non-coders can add to the repertoire
- ways of making the prototype more like a real prototype, that is, not totally use case dependent, without going into real coding territory
- any other suggestions