Who is presenting what?
I once regretted showing a prototype. It was back when I was a young and inexperienced designer. I had just moved to a smaller market from a major design center, and hadn’t grown out of my big-city ways. In this smaller market, the time frames were tighter and the briefs were less-than-clear. So, as a way to get buy-in before committing too much time on high-fidelity, I presented my ideas as quick sketches to the team, as I was taught to do in the big market.
The lines were in pencil, without color, and generalized. Although, each rough drawing thoroughly occupied a single large-format parchment sheet, it was basically an over-sized napkin sketch presentation for a poster campaign. Without my understanding of the speed of the project turnaround or how the client interaction was managed, I allowed the account manage to “hold on to” the concept work.
If I had been there to present the concepts myself (I wasn’t invited), things may have gone a little different. As I was later notified, the client was fine with the ideas. They were “ok”. However, she adored the sketchy style of the designs. And, insisted that the posters be printed “as-is”. And, to my embarrassment, the city was covered with my giant napkin sketches for a little while. I blamed the firm’s small-town mindset, and left that “agency” a short time later.
I was reminded of this story as I read What do Prototypes Prototype? by Stephanie Houde and Charles Hill. They wrote, “Ironically, while the design team understood the meaning of the hand-drawn graphics, other members of the organization became enamored with the sketchy style to the extent that they considered using it in the final artifact.” It makes perfect sense to me now that I think about it years later. The person that presented wasn’t ill-informed of what they were presenting or why. The person was ill-prepared. The presenter didn’t know if they were they were presenting my design for look and feel, or for the role it would be used for as a communication campaign, or implenetation. And, most definitely, the term “prototype” was not defined (at all). Did I already mention that I was young and inexperience?
More recently, I read in Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf about the dangers of presenting presenting Low-Fidelity prototypes. It presents methods of using tape, pens, paper, flaps to develop quick prototypes for UX development. With this approach, you can get a sense of workflow fast and cheaply. And, according to the book, it can be fun (I prefer not to whistle when I work). But, there are downsides to exploring design this way. It is time consuming, it is unrealistic and there isn’t enough information to provide feedback.
Although, my little poster series wasn’t UX or product design, the issues were the same and apparently my sketchy approach to presenting the design ideas was bound for failure. For years, I blamed the account executive for not knowing much about the project or how to present (or anything, really). Now, I see that it was the wrong type of prototype. A mid-fidelity prototype, as described by Gothelf, that focused on integrating the role, implementation and style (look and feel) would have been better in my absence. Of course, the presenter should have been me, the designer, who could have better prepared the client for the discussion, but I will let that one go now.
