Prototyping Book Goes to Press

It’s official. After nine months of research and nearly two years in the making, my book, Prototyping: a practitioner’s guide has launched. I wrote Prototyping for anyone who’s involved in the process of designing (software) products. If you’re a designer, developer, or business person involved in designing and building products, chances are you’ll find something beneficial in Prototyping.

The first part of the book provides a number of helpful case studies and tips for selling prototyping to your boss and clients as part of the design process–one of the biggest challenges we face in the user experience field today. The next couple of chapters provide eight guiding principles I’ve developed in the past couple of years for improving the success of prototyping in the design process.

Then you’ll find six chapters packed with hands-on tutorials for prototyping with paper, Powerpoint, Visio, Axure RP, Fireworks, and even HTML. Each chapter starts with the pros and cons of the methods or tools, then walks you through basic and advanced techniques for using the tool. You’ll find the example files for these chapters on the book’s website. You can even grab my iPhone stencil for Fireworks–entirely vector.

And finally, I wrap the book up with a chapter on how to effectively prepare for and conduct usability testing on your prototype. I even include a sample waiver you can use with participants and a test guide.

This book wouldn’t have happened without the help and support of a number of people. First, I want to thank Lou Rosenfeld and the advisory board at Rosenfeld Media. I really learned a lot in the process.

I hope every author out there is fortunate enough to have an editor who balances tradition with the willingness to try something new. My editor, Marta Justak, did just that. I can’t thank Marta enough for working with me on this book and ensuring that it stayed true to my vision.

I’d like to thank the following people for contributing their wisdom to this book: Bill Scott of Netflix, Anders Ramsay an independent UX consultant, David Verba of Adaptive Path, Robert Reimann of frog design, Chris Pallé an independent UX consultant, Victor Hsu of Axure, Scott Mathews of Xplane, Tom Humbarger of iRise, Robert Hoekman, Jr. of Miskeeto, Joe Sokohl of Regular Joe Consulting, Nathan Curtis of EightShapes, Henk Wijnholds and Stefan Wobben of Concept7, Jonathan Baker-Bates of Expedia, and Fred Beecher of Evantage.

I also had a number of brilliant people review the chapters I wrote on specific methods and tools to make sure they were accurate. I’d like to thank Jeff Patton, an independent UX consultant and Agile coach, for reviewing my paper prototyping chapter, Anders Ramsay for reviewing my chapters on Visio and HTML, Alan Musselman Lead UI Designer and Fireworks Evangelist at Adobe for reviewing my chapter on Fireworks, and Fred Beecher for reviewing my chapter on Axure RP Pro.
And last, but most certainly not least, I’d like to thank my wife, Angela, for gently reminding me that this book won’t write itself.

Now, what are you waiting for. Go pick up a copy of Prototyping: a practitioner’s guide, start prototyping and change your design process forever. And when you’re done reading it, don’t forget to write a review on Amazon.