I love prototyping. I wrote an entire blog post about my love for it.
It is the best way to evaluate designs, and it exposes and reveals design assumptions (both known and unknown). A design can look good, and seem good, and explain well, but once it’s in a prototype – even a simple one – flaws become easier to spot.
Now, I know I sound a little crazy for saying “I love prototyping because it makes mistakes obvious”. Who wants their mistakes to be obvious? But I am firmly on the side of “prototype early, and prototype often”, because I want to find mistakes before they go any further.
Axure is an incredibly powerful prototyping tool, ideal for prototyping complex interactions and data entry.
The prototype linked below is an example an an Axure prototype I made. The design is for editing details on an insurance policy as part of a midterm amendment. This was an early iteration of this process, and I talk a little more about the entire redesign in my post on redesigning an underwriting application.
