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I read Prototyping by Todd Zaki Warfel back in 2011. So while some of the software tools discussed in the book are a bit out-of-date, the concepts around ideation and prototyping are still useful today.

Prototyping is what I do for about 40% of my job. It is foundational to making sure you are on the right track before ever spending time writing a ton of code. It also is great for getting a concept out early and for playing with multiple concepts at once — especially if you are considering multiple methods of tackling the same problem and you want to figure out what is the critical workflow. Prototypes are cheap and are useful tools for ideation. In fact, when I used to help teach Information Architecture we used to make people generate four sketch prototypes before we would pick one for the teams to develop.

This book helps cover all of these basic concepts and provides a good argument for why prototyping should be part of the software development process. It also covers the different types of prototyping and how to do them (with dated pointers to software). But, the most useful part of this book is essentially chapter 4 where Zaki Warfel covers the guiding principles of prototyping.

1. Understand your audience and intent
2. Plan a little — prototype the rest
3. Set expectations
4. You can sketch
5. Its a prototype — not the Mona Lisa
6. If you can’t make it, fake it
7. Prototype on what you need
8. Reduce risk — prototype early and often

It doesn’t matter what software you use (or not use) to make your prototype. All that matters is that you do prototype. Following those guidelines are going to do nothing but lead you in the right direction for creating usable and useful software.

The last thing to say about this book is that it is a pretty typical Rosenfeld book. There are beautiful pictures, easy to digest chapters with recaps at the end, and the writing is easy to digest for beginners. While a bit rudimentary, I think that even with the dated materials that this book would be a great resource for anyone in software engineering.

Book Club Questions

1. Can you think of an example of finding a bad workflow because you prototyped it?
2. How long do you spend prototyping before you move to building software?
3. What is your favorite software to use for prototyping? Mine is OmniGraffle, but I’m starting to get pretty proficient in Illustrator and the Adobe Suite.