Paper Prototyping vs. Balsamiq Mockups

Posted by: Josh Walsh in Reviews.

Our process of designing mockups directly influences the quality of our finished design. Great design isn’t just in pixels and colors, it is also in the interaction design. We can’t design graphically until we have designed and tested wireframes.

Paper Prototyping with Paper and Marker

My design tools are primitive. They include a stack of paper, a Sharpie marker, and a wastebasket. Sketching wireframes on paper is very fast. It takes only a few seconds, and the result is always disposable. Drawing and trashing concepts is the interaction designers way of brainstorming for ideas.

Often I throw away a few dozen iterations before creating something I think is worthy of showing to my client. Granted, the process is not very “green,” but it works phenomenally well for me.

Any time you can encourage change by making that change cheap, your offering will improve. Since paper sketches are easily crumpled up and thrown away, the only thing we have to lose is a minute of our time.

The Sharpie marker is important. Using pencils/pens encourages you to get into nitty gritty details which will distract from the overall design.  Bold strokes encourage you to think about broad ideas.

Paper Prototyping with Balsamiq Mockups

Balsamiq Mockups is a good tool for helping you create digital mockups. It is a simple to use application which makes wireframing a quick process. However, it’s still nowhere near as fast or as easy as paper.

Designing with Balsamiq is fast because they have put time into preparing reusable interface widgets and design patterns which you can drag and drop into your design. I have found the included elements to be insufficient in my design process. Balsamiq does offer a plugin structure to design your own elements, but switching to paper is easier.

Another thing I like about Balsamiq is that the finished mockup looks terrible. Clients are often hesitant to suggest changes to mockups when they are pretty. Or, they may get hung up on fonts, colors and spacing when they shouldn’t. Your client should feel good about making design suggestions. You should encourage them to make changes. With Balsamiq, your clients can’t drive. They have to dictate changes for you to make. With paper, you can just give them the marker and let them go at it.

You can’t always be face to face with clients during the design process, although I highly recommend it whenever possible. If this is the case, Balsamiq makes a great alternative to paper prototypes. They can be shared, emailed or posted to Basecamp, without compromising too much of the process.

In the end, I still prefer paper. What about you?

Disclaimer: We were given a license to Balsamiq in exchange for publicizing our opinion.