With today's highly interactive software, designing on paper is not enough. Without being able to play with the interface, you can't really know how it will work. Rather than putting this off to the development phase or an explicit prototyping phase, start prototyping while designing. Learn how to build quick prototypes to answer specific design questions.
Prototyping during the design process unlocks a deeper understanding of the system being designed, especially in today's world of highly interactive software. We all understand the value interactive prototypes can add to the design process, but prototyping can be unwieldy and quickly grow in scope. This session introduces the Art of Rapid Prototyping -- a way of thinking that involves building more specialized prototypes to answer very specific design questions.
In this session, we will go through the basic axioms of rapid prototyping which have been derived from work in both physical and virtual mediums. These axioms help you identify what to prototype, when to prototype and how to prototype whether you are working with physical devices or software. We will then go deeper into specific techniques for developing rapid software prototypes. These techniques will provide specific and actionable techniques for quickly building meaningful prototypes. The focus of this section of the talk will be on how designers can use these techniques to inform design decisions.
The session will end with a series of guided examples which will utilize the techniques to provide real and approachable examples of how to apply these techniques in everyday practice. While there will be some tips associated with specific
recommended tools, this session is largely tool agnostic. The underlying principles of Rapid Prototyping work regardless of whether you are using programming languages like HTML5/Javascript/CSS or prototyping suites like Axure or Mockingbird.

The session will include a section focused on building a prototype in real time.