Carl Sziebert
Google
Overview
Prototyping is the most effective design method for cultivating a shared understanding of your idea, validating your design thinking, and communicating your vision to users and stakeholders alike. This session distills nearly a decade’s worth of experience building prototypes as a UX engineer at Google into a series of actionable tips and tricks that will help you maximize your design and development efforts. You’ll also gain insight into how they leverage prototypes at Google to scale their design process, shorten the product development lifecycle, and foster a deeper understanding of our user’s needs.
Target Audience
Open to all those who want to better understand the value of prototyping as part of the UX design process
Five Things Audience Members Will Learn
How Google uses prototypes to drive ideation and strengthen collaboration across products and teams
The importance of validating your design thinking with real users on real devices early and often
Case studies that demonstrate the virtues and values of UX prototyping
Strategies that you can apply to your own process and implement with your projects
The role UX engineers play in the design and development of products at Google
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Defined: What is a
prototype?
Prototypes defined
An early sample, model, or release of a product
built to test a concept or process or to act as a
thing to be learned from
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Prototypes allow us to focus on better
understanding the problem we’re
tasked with solving. Because they are
interactive, they can help eliminate
guesswork and subjectivity often
found when reviewing mocks.
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The real value is in the learning
Prototypes defined
User Experience
What is desirable?
PM & Marketing,
Sales, Strategy
What is profitable?
Engineering
What is feasible?
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If picture is worth a thousand words, then a prototype is
worth 10,000. Prototypes go beyond the power of show and
tell – they let you experience the design.
Todd Zaki Warfel, Prototyping
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GOOGLEUX
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The Skeptics Guide to Low Fidelity Prototyping
by Laura Busche, Smashing Magazine
Lo-fi sketching &
paper prototyping
Exploring ideas with prototypes
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GOOGLEUX
Giving more freedom to designers
to express their ideas without
having to convince someone
else to build it for them
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Design vignettes &
micro-interactions
with digital tools
Exploring ideas with prototypes
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GOOGLEUX
Design at the highest fidelity,
which means the prototypes are
harder and more time-consuming
to create
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User journeys &
stakeholder
narratives with
code
Exploring ideas with prototypes
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GOOGLEUX
Scope your prototypes effectively
Choose the best
fidelity for your
prototypes
Strike a balance between where you
are in the design lifecycle and the
goals of the project
Choosing the Right Prototyping Tool
by Javier Cuello
GOOGLEUX
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Scope your prototypes effectively
Choose the right tools
Tools are a layer of abstraction on
top of prototypes. They make the
process of prototyping easier
because many of the components
are already in place
All The UX Prototyping Tools Ever
by Taylor Palmer
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Lo-fi isn’t dead
Scope your prototypes effectively
The broader the set of existing
ideas and directions, the shallower
the technical stack of your
prototype should be
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What goes into faking the experience is
dictated by the context of the situation.
Think about the question you’re trying to
answer, what you’re hoping to learn, and
the minimum requirements needed to
understand it.
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Fake it until you make it
Scope your prototypes effectively
GOOD FAST
CHEAP
This doesn’t exist!
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Failure is always an option.
Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Avoid falling in love
with your first design
Failure is always an option
Prototypes serve as a forcing
function to enable iteration and
learning
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Expose your ideas
to real users on
real devices
Failure is always an option
Be mindful of holding your work
too close to the vest and
neglecting to collect feedback
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Beware of over-
engineering your
prototypes
Failure is always an option
You’ve got 99 problems, don’t
make your technology stack one
too
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Failure is always an option
Fidelity addiction is real
Admitting you have a problem is
the first step to recovery and
regaining control of your design
process
The dribbblisation of design
by Paul Adams
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Discover and test
for friction
Embrace failure and build success
“Cognitive friction occurs when a user is
confronted with an interface or affordance
that appears to be intuitive but delivers
results.”
What is Cognitive Friction? by
Interaction Design Foundation
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Embrace failure and build success
Design is not an individual sport
and it’s important to eliminate as
much subjectivity in the decision
making process as possible
Neutralize the
politics of deciding
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GOOGLEUX
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Ever heard something you were pretty sure
wouldn’t work, but couldn’t convince your
peers or stakeholders? Build a prototype to
show and support all points of view.
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Invalidation is just as
important as validation
Embrace failure and build success
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Embrace failure and build success
Build compromise
with enthusiasm
Letting go: Living a life without attachment
by Jedi Path
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“It is through self-discipline we actually
do the work of letting go of our
attachments”
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The difference between screwing around and
science is writing it down.
Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Embrace failure and build success
Design for
breakpoints and
iteration
Human-centered design is a practical
and repeatable approach to arriving at
innovative solutions. It is centered on a
process of inspiration, ideation, and
implementation.
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Design Kit: The Field Guide to
Human Centered Design by IDEO
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Embrace failure and build success
Keep a record of
your progress
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Use source control for everything
you make. Consider project
management and communication
tools such as Basecamp, Asana,
or Slack.
File Management For Designers
by Neil Shankar
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We use OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to capture our goals and define
success metrics for our projects
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How Google sets goals
Embrace failure and build success
How Google sets goals: OKRs
by Rick Klau
● Objectives are ambitious, and should feel somewhat uncomfortable
● Key Results are measurable; they should be easy to grade with a number (We use a 0–1.0
scale to grade each key result at the end of a quarter)
● OKRs are public; everyone in the company should be able to see what everyone else is working
on (and how they did in the past)
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Practice the art of ruthless prioritization
Embrace failure and build success
The Myth of Multitasking by
James Clear
“Doing more things does not drive faster or better
results. Doing better things drives better results.
Even more accurately, doing one thing as best you
can drives better results.”
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● It takes time for the people added to a project to
become productive
● Communication overhead increases as the
number of people increases
● Limited divisibility of tasks
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Good communication is essential to
building success at scale
Embrace failure and build success
The Mythical Man Month
by Fred Brooks
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The single biggest problem in communication
is the illusion that it has taken place.
George Bernard Shaw
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Embrace failure and build success
Master the powers
of active listening
“Listening is one of the most
important skills you can have.
How well you listen has a major
impact on your job effectiveness…”
10 Steps to Effective Listening
by Dianne Schilling
GOOGLEUX
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The longer you wait to collect feedback, the harder
it is to establish shared context and get your
message across clearly.
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Ask for feedback early and often
Embrace failure and build success
How to give and receive feedback
by Lulu Cheng
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The coolest toys don't have to be bought; they
can be built. In fact, sometimes the only way
they'll ever exist is if you make them yourself.
Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Bootstrap your design process and
reduce churn by investing in the
development of PDKs, Sketch plugins,
etc.
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Foster consistency and
improve productivity
with design tooling
Embrace failure and build success
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Embrace failure and build success
Practice strengths
building and invest
in learning
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Strive for mastery with the tools of
your trade. Become a UX polyglot.
Reinforce the skills you have and
make time to build new ones.
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Don’t take advice from successful people.
Andy Poes, Google UXE
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