Design x 2: October 2012

I confess. I get excited about prototyping! As a marketing designer I have been prototyping for years, and now I'm really interested in the similarities of prototyping for instructional design. For those of you who are new to this concept, prototyping is simply a useful way of organizing your instructional notes and conceptual sketches before product production. By organizing the flow of information, you can think through each page or screen of instructional materials and plan out your content details. This process will help you visualize, edit and convey your content before investing a large amount of time or money in the final product.
Storyboarding
Throughout my years of designing literally thousands of products for corporations and consumers, my design process has benefited from one basic type of prototype--the Storyboard. Interestingly, Storyboards first originated in the Walt Disney Studios in the 1930's and have been an essential part of film, television and advertising production since! Storyboards have helped me think through my content details before getting too involved in a project. My Storyboards normally start out as rough sketches and handwritten notes that depict each page or screen of a new project. This is one of my favorite creative activities, usually enjoyed with a cup of coffee. I keep several of my favorite sketchbooks and pens handy, initially just doodling whatever sequence first comes to mind, editing as I go. When I am happy with my content flow, I create a more elaborate visual mockup in Adobe Illustrator. Other programs such as Word and Powerpoint can also be used, with each page or slide representing one screen of your final instructional product.

A Storyboard can be a sequence of hand-drawn sketches to get your ideas flowing:

Or a series of computer-generated frames depicting the flow of information:

Rapid Prototyping
If you are prototyping interactive online materials, you may want to consider the Rapid Prototyping or Spiral model instead of Storyboarding. Also known as Iterative Design, Rapid Prototyping features a repetitive implement-evaluate cycle, allowing your product to be constantly tested, reviewed and enhanced early on in the instructional design process. In the marketing world, I have used this process for website and video development. Initially, try sketching out your ideas, but then switch to your computer to bring your instructional content to life. Your actual authoring software--Powerpoint, Articulate or Captivate--can be used directly for this streamlined prototyping method. By evaluating your product throughout it's life cycle, you can expect to shorten your final production time by reducing the number of last minute revisions. Through Rapid Prototyping, you will be able to test a preliminary training program and provide stakeholders with a realistic user interface of the final end product. This early visualization allows plenty of time for user and stakeholder feedback to revise your instructional designs.

Rapid Prototyping allows realistic product testing and user feedback:

As with Storyboarding, the main benefit of Rapid Prototyping is the ability to uncover and resolve design issues early in the design and development process, saving time and money. By carefully planning the sequence of content within your instructional products--through either Storyboarding or Rapid Prototyping—you can easily share your strategy and visual concepts to your team members, stakeholders or test users. This front-end process will help you work out the finer details before production, resulting in an improved end product, fewer headaches and a happy client!

Watch this short video about Storyboarding: