Paper Prototype (02/26/14)

When we were assigned to do a paper prototype of our apps, the first thing I did was brainstorm about how my app would function. How would the user navigate? What does the user need first? The location and date were obvious. After that the app gives you the tides, the bar graph, the sun and moon rise and set times, automatically. What would the users do next? Check the tides on the next day, and perhaps any day after that. So my user can just scroll from screen to screen to get the data for the next several days and scroll back to today’s screen or even days before. Using sub menus the user can go to any other date they want. They can also go to other locations, select some favorite lcations and change between feet and meters and time zones. Once I started designing the app I realized that a lot more pages were needed to adequately demonstrate the prototype.

 

After watching the video examples of paper prototypes, I noticed that most of them were very rough sketches being placed onto a phone or phone template. I then decided to print some templates of each page of my app from my wireframes, and organize them in order of how the user would navigate. Both the videos “iPhone User Interface Design, Paper Prototype Study”,  and FinalFinal.com“Mobile Paper Prototype for the Predict the Sky App” by Sofie Dennis showed small cut outs being substituted for each page. After trying this I found it to be confusing. I decided instead to make a page for each screenshot to keep me from going back and forth during my presentation. I added subpages such as locations, favorites, change date, timezone, units and about. As I practiced my demonstration, it became apparent that more pages were needed to in order for it to flow better. After adding more pages I recorded my demonstrated of New York Tides App.

Sources

Dennis, Sofie. “Mobile Paper Prototype for the Predict the Sky App.” Final Final. N.p., 7 Sept. 2012. Web. 23 Feb. 2014. <http://finalfinal.com/sofiedennis/mobile-paper-prototype-predict-sky-app>.

iPhone User Interface Design, Paper Prototype Study. YouTube. N.p., 3 Jan. 2011. Web. 23 Feb. 2014.