On Nov 17, 2009, at 11:05 AM, Charles B. Kreitzberg wrote: > It would be great to learn about techniques that can make PowerPoint more > usable as a prototyping tool.
As Fred Beecher points out in his recent UIE virtual seminar, fidelity comes in two flavors: functionality and visual aesthetics. I really like the way Fred illustrates these two levels of fidelity using an X/Y plot. Keeping that in mind, PowerPoint won't get you high fidelity visual aesthetics on its own. Typically, it's combined with Photoshop, Illustrator, or something similar to create the visual assets and pull them into PowerPoint for prototyping. PowerPoint can get you a fairly moderate to high level of fidelity on the functional axis. I've even done things like fake javascript fade techniques (a pretty standard Ajax-style transition) in PPT. While it's not as robust as HTML or Flash, it's a tool with a fairly low learning curve and it's on nearly every business machine on the planet, making it readily accessible. Oh, and if you're interested in finding out how to prototype with PPT, why not pick up the book Prototyping: a practitioner's guide. I cover PPT and 5 other tools in there, each with it's own hands on tutorial, as well as a number of general best practices and guidelines for prototyping regardless of the tool or method. Pick up a copy of the book http://bit.ly/19Hiir and save 15% with PRPUBNOT. You'll even get sample files and templates for prototyping in Fireworks, PPT, and other programs. Cheers! Todd Zaki Warfel Principal Designer Messagefirst | Designing Information. Beautifully. ---------------------------------- Contact Info Voice: (215) 825-7423 Email: t...@zakiwarfel.com Blog: zakiwarfel.com Twitter: @zakiwarfel ---------------------------------- In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not. ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
