In preparation for usability testing during our Design Phase, Team Spirit creates prototypes of your digital product that have varying degrees of fidelity, depending on the stage at which we produce them.

Prototyping During Conceptual Modeling

During conceptual modeling, Team Spirit creates low- to medium-fidelity prototypes of alternative design concepts for usability testing. Our low-fidelity prototypes are typically paper prototypes in the form of freehand sketches or wireframes. In usability test sessions, a member of our team plays the role of the computer and simulates interactivity by presenting the appropriate pages of the paper prototypes in response to the actions of test participants. Our medium-fidelity prototypes are typically interactive wireframes that partially simulate your digital product’s functionality, but not its actual appearance.

Prototyping During Design and Specification

Throughout user experience design and specification, Team Spirit creates progressively higher-fidelity prototypes of specific aspects of your digital product’s functionality for usability testing. Our medium-fidelity prototypes are typically interactive wireframes that partially simulate your product’s functionality, but not its actual appearance. Our high-fidelity prototypes are interactive prototypes that accurately simulate certain aspects of your product’s functionality and exhibit its actual appearance. Depending on the test scenarios that participants are to follow during usability testing, the functionality that our prototypes simulate may be broad, deep, or limited to only the functionality that supports the test scenarios. We sometimes use a Wizard of Oz technique, in which a member of our team working at another computer simulates the results of a test participant’s interactions on the participant’s screen.