Born On The Web

During a workshop last year I completely fell in love with paper prototyping. Making a rough paper interface is such a fast and easy way to build software or a website, test it with users, get feedback from stakeholders and improve it extremely fast early on. All you need is pen and paper so you can easily build the interfaces sitting in the sun enjoying a Duvelke, without getting sidetracked with a zillion PhotoShop possibilities and only focusing on the basics: the structure, content and interaction.
Here’s a nice (Dutch) video giving an overview of the process.

I’ve been around in a few web design and interactive agencies and I was surprised to see that this technique isn’t used more often. It can help get an interactive project on track from the beginning and function as a clear guideline for the design and development teams. Why isn’t it used more often? Maybe clients like to see pretty screens of the interface instead of rough amateurish looking sketches?