| Great article. The company I work for recently decided to ditch the IAs and go straight to prototyping. At first, I thought the decision was crazy. But the truth is, people want to see, feel and interact and they won't be "done" until they can do that. When we talk about responsive design, it's usually to mean something about fluid width / device happiness. Going straight to prototyping with the actual application is just an extension of this mentality. Here are a few reasons why: - Clients will try the prototype in configurations/devices that you don't have and can't test without employing an army of testers. - Clients see conflicts with their business logic and your understanding of their needs before the roots are too deep. - You can actually write articulated unit tests, framework and data structure based on something you know inheritably works. - No one gets left out of the process. Nothing can turn a project sour more than a member of your team that feels alienated and parachuted into a half-baked creation. Of course, with any approach, you need boundaries and a defined scope. When your client understands specifically what scope is, and that you're watching for it, the results are predictable. |