Boxes And Arrows : The Design Behind the Design

Article Idea:

PDF Prototypes: Mistakenly Disregarded and Underutilized

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.