PDF Prototypes: Mistakenly Disregarded and Underutilized

Article Idea:

suggested by Kyle Soucy on 2007/03/26

Creating a clickable PDF to prototype a design is not a new concept, but it is a valuable tool that is often overlooked and underutilized. While working over the years with other designers, information architects and usability professionals, I’ve noticed that many of my colleagues have the same misconceptions as to what can be created with a PDF.

People don’t seem to realize that you can do much more than just create links and interactive forms. You can easily mimic certain Ajax-like functionality by updating only parts of a PDF instead of an entire page. PDFs also have the ability to hide or show certain form fields based on a user’s actions. Image rollovers and similar dynamic effects can be created in a PDF without even writing a line of code. Although it may not be typically found in a PDF, fore/background color changes, tooltips, popup boxes and other common DHTML scripts can be easily simulated in a PDF. Audio and video files (including Flash movies) can be directly embedded into your PDFs for enhanced interactivity. Furthermore, you can select to have these files play automatically in response to specified triggers (i.e. user clicks on the “Product Demo” button). With a little creativity, you can mimic just about any interaction with an interface by taking advantage of this excellent feature.

One of the best benefits of a PDF prototype is that it can be tested remotely. Paper prototyping is such a wonderful method, but one of it’s biggest drawbacks is that you can’t test the prototypes remotely. By using clickable PDFs we are bringing our paper prototypes to life and still making it possible to test early in the development cycle with users remotely. All of the benefits of paper prototyping and remote testing is combined when using PDF Prototypes. You’re able to collect invaluable feedback from users, in their natural environment, no matter where they are geographically located, without investing a huge amount of time or money in coding or designing your product.

I would envision that this article would provide some “how-to” information and examples as well as explain the benefits of PDF prototyping.

Want to see this idea turned into a story?

12 people said yes. | 0 people said no.

Michael Beavers

69 Reputation points

Posted 2007/03/29 @ 06:34AM with

This could be cool…can you also provide live examples of PDF protoypes?

John Ferrara

85 Reputation points

Posted 2007/03/30 @ 05:32AM with

Practical rapid prototyping concept, using existing processes but taking them a little bit further. Would also like to see live examples, and perhaps a link to a video demo of a usability test using a PDF prototype.

Erin Malone

207 Reputation points

Posted 2007/03/30 @ 16:20PM with

Would you focus on PDF only or other alternative tools to make prototypes – i.e. Powerpoint. I think this is an interesting idea and it would benefit from some live examples as part of the story.

Zoltán Gócza

1 Reputation points

Posted 2007/03/31 @ 13:56PM with

Sounds really interesting, would definitely like to see more! Particulary modelling advanced interactions.

For the others, see eg. http://www.gotomedia.com/gotoreport/may2005/news_0505_usa… (and 2nd part) for PDF prototypes (though it is a really simple example with no dynamic elements that makes the whole idea sexy).

Kyle Soucy

72 Reputation points

Posted 2007/04/02 @ 11:21AM with

I would definitely provide links to the live PDF prototypes within the article.

A video demo of a usability test on a PDF prototype is possible.

I envision this article to just be on PDF prototyping (not ppt or other alternatives).

Uday Gajendar

31 Reputation points

Posted 2007/04/03 @ 16:58PM with

Same here, I would like to see your take on PDF prototyping, having done some of it at Adobe in the past, (with remote testing too) and personally advocated for it as a lightweight method to solicit user feedback…and certainly the potential to be a more robust tool, given that you can do full-blown javascript within PDF!

Perhaps comparing/contrasting PDF vs Powerpoint vs web/html vs Flash? (perhaps just a couple of them) Either way, PDF has great value yet to be tapped/described. Can’t wait to hear your examples! Live links would be great!

Dave Cooksey

2 Reputation points

Posted 2007/04/16 @ 06:51AM with

Kyle – I would rather see you focus exclusively on the PDF format. If you are giving step-by-step instructions, covering the areas you discussed above will be more than enough for an article. In addition, I would rather see more on the practical steps to using PDFs to test remotely than a direct comparison of PPT or paper prototyping. My reasoning is that there seems to be quite a bit of untapped power in using PDFs for prototyping and I would rather read about these features, functions, tips & tricks than methodology pros & cons. – Dave

Donna Maurer

165 Reputation points

Posted 2007/04/17 @ 14:47PM with

I love these types of practical articles.

Joseph Seeley

3 Reputation points

Posted 2007/04/25 @ 07:30AM with

I would also be very interested in reading this article. I rely heavily on PowerPoint to create prototypes early in the process, and being able to gather feedback from remote users is one of the reasons. If PDFs can give me the same benefits with more power and comparable effort, I want to know.

I agree with those who say to focus on the PDF technique rather than the comparison with other techniques. Your readers can make their own comparisons. After the Pero PDF Prototyping technique becomes more widely used and known, someone can write the article comparing various techniques.

Rahul Dewan

0 Reputation points

Posted 2007/05/03 @ 17:15PM with

Very very interesting. I have personally earlier used some of the 3rd party PDF Commenting software to make bubble comments on PDFs of Wireframes and even UI, to define functionality of websites, which were actually shared with the IBM India team for deploying an Intranet at our client site. While the method was effective, and I was recently looking around for the specific software I had used that time, it would be very interesting to learn about the possibilities mentioned by you, Kyle. Would love to know more!

gil rose