September 2008
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24 Reads
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12 Citations
Because they are easy to create and modify, low fidel- ity prototypes are commonly used in early evaluations of user interface designs. Designers typically use either pen- and-paper or various computer-based tools to create and test low fidelity prototypes. However, our informal analy- ses of these technologies indicate that they do not opti- mally support the two key, complementary tasks of (a) prototype creation and (b) wizard-of-oz testing. To ad- dress this problem, we have developed WOZ PRO, a pen- based software environment for the quick and easy crea- tion and testing of low fidelity user interface prototypes. When designing interface screens in WOZ PRO, designers can easily (a) propagate a design change to other related screens, and (b) specify the set of screens that are reach- able from a given screen. In a wizard-of-oz test, WOZ PRO reduces the cognitive load on the wizard by allowing navigation only to those next screens that are valid. An experimental comparison of WOZ PRO and pen-and- paper provides evidence of WOZ PRO's potential, and insight into how the design of WOZ PRO might improved.