Online Prototyping: A Shortcut to Approval

Benefits of Online Prototyping

• It reduces development time.
• It maximizes both reviewer and user participation.
• It ensures that reviews are accurate and productive.
• It uses everything it creates—there are no throwaway paper versions.

How Online Prototyping Works

Online Concept
The online concept replaces the outline or storyboard in traditional publication:

• Appearance screens link to electronically mocked-up chapters, sections and pages representing the document's structure and overall content.
• Reviewers scroll and link through the hierarchy of topics.
• Once appearance, structure and overall content are approved, development and approval proceeds to a small, representative section.

Outcomes include:

• approval of document appearance, structure, functionality and content
• electronic files that will become the templates in which subsequent drafts are developed.

Online Draft
In this phase:

• content is added to the templates created during the concept phase
• coding for navigation and any other enhancements is made more robust.

There can be any number of drafts, depending on need.

The key advantage is that, because reviewers are reviewing the actual product that will be published, their input is more specific and accurate.

Online Pilot
Pilots with representative users can be conducted at any time.

The rush to produce a working technical version for pilot is eliminated because operational issues are addressed every step of the way.