Posted in Website Usability Testing	July 6, 2006

By Kim Mateus, Managing Editor, Mequoda Daily and Library

Getting the design of your website right often proves to be a daunting task. The development costs alone for creating a website with a unique value proposition can be staggering. Our inside joke on that is, "How do you create a $10 million Web business? Start with $38 million and work your way down."

Wouldn't it be great if you didn't have to guess what your customers expect? The good news is YOU CAN—and without writing a single line of HTML code. If you have paper, pencils and some simple office supplies, you and your team of designers and developers can ask users to test your website before you even build your first page.

And someone has finally written the book to help you do it.

Carolyn Snyder, a 10-year veteran of helping companies design better software and websites, has published the definitive "how-to" for using paper prototyping as a method of designing usable effective websites, software and webware. Paper Prototyping is a fact-filled handbook, jammed with case studies, helpful images and processes that will have you creating websites that are more intuitive, efficient and aesthetically pleasing.

Here are three reasons to use paper prototyping:

1. Paper is easier, faster and cheaper than coding.
2. Testing with real users gives you insights into what they need.
3. Your team gets laser-like focus.

In a highly competitive market, usable intuitive websites and software get a powerful competitive advantage. Creating usable, intuitive products simply cannot be done without user involvement. Development is expensive. Paper prototyping is not. Ergo, getting users involved in the design of your website or software upfront, using a paper prototype to test the concept and design is good business sense. And getting Carolyn Snyder's book, Paper Prototyping, makes the best sense of all.

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