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Today is the first day of the 2006 edition of the Penn State Web Conference. This year I had the opportunity to work with a group of web professionals at Penn State presenting a tutorial on Usability and Paper Prototyping. Wendy Jones, a Marketing Manager at Penn State first proposed that we do the tutorial after attending a workshop at the UI Conference in Boston last fall. Wendy, together with Rose Pruyne, Programmer/Analyst, Lynne Shala, Senior Webmaster, and myself pulled together the tutorial over the last few months.

Paper prototyping is a method used to gather user feedback on a Web site before you create your first HTML file. During the tutorial this morning, tutorial attendees were provided with a variety of supplies and 90 minutes of time to create a mockup of a site on paper. Supplies included post-it notes, paper, markers, glue, etc. Attendees were seperated into small groups and were asked to create a site selling iPods and accessories. Once their paper prototype was created, users were invited to test their prototype. The test users were presented with a set of instructions asking them to order an iPod and a couple of accessories and add the items into a shopping cart and procede through the scenario through checkout where they would presented a receipt of their order.

Attendees immediately discovered just how usable their paper prototype was and were given time to correct any problems discovered during the user testing phase of the tutorial.

Update

We will be presenting a 4 hour workshop on Usability and Paper Prototyping at HighEdWebDev in Rochester this coming October. Conference details and session information should be released soon. Registration opens July 1.