Pros and Cons of Clickable Prototypes

Interaction Design documents tend to be boring. They are never fully understood by the reader, unless they were the ones making it, which is understandable. An interaction design document for a platform can be quite large, consisting out of several templates, each containing a multitude of components. Components themselves have variations too and these need to be described as well. All in all, this results in a large, sleep inducing document. So is, there an alternative? Yes, clickable demos can help take the boredom out of “reading” an Interaction Design document.

The Pros

• It’s noy quite as boring as a document. Once you have some interactivity to demonstrate, things can seem a lot more exciting.
• It conveys the message more clearly. Seeing something slide, change or move works better than telling someone about it.
• You can get a client enthusiastic much easier. We all like to look at beautiful things. Seeing something in action will get the attention much easier.

The Cons

• The biggest problem when using clickable demos is that the product has slowly started to move out of the prototype stable and “prototype” can easily be mistaken for “first build”. This is especially true if you decide to add a lot of detailed design elements to your demo.
• Making a clickable demo in might very possibly take much more time to develop and you should ask yourself whether it is worth the extra effort to get your message across.

I am not sure which is better and I am sure that there are very valid arguments for and against clickable prototypes. With software like Axure and Thermo, creating prototypes can only get easier and faster.
 

Tags: axure, prototyping, demo, interaction design