The non-prototyping work we do

Perhaps it seems like I take aim at prototyping tools, while ignoring the non-prototyping tools. Clearly there are many specialized tools for the other parts of the UX design process.

For instance, there are tools for user testing and feedback like Uservoice, Usabilla, and Survey Monkey. And tools for flowcharts, mindmaps and sitemaps like Visio, OmniGraffle or even Powerpoint.

While there is value in tools that do one thing and do it well. Using different tools for different perspectives on the same process offers a broken experience. Designing UX is the one thing we do, creating a deliverable like a flowchart is a subset of that.

Sharing of assets is far from a seamless experience and it’s just not practical to use different interfaces to create, collaborate, communicate and validate the same design.

Switching tools is time consuming for myself, but in collaboration and communicating with different stakeholders it’s a potential source of mistakes and miscommunication. The preferred situation is that there is one online ‘truth’ of the current state of the whole design.

To the credit of some of the new tools like InVision and UX-Pin, they do seem to give a lot more prominence to support the workflow. It’s a step forward, but since they still seem to put the sole focus on creating prototypes, there is still a lot of room for improvement.

Let’s take a look at what is needed to move forward.