Interface Prototyping and Usability Testing

PhreaK

I'm current in the process of developing a UI thats going to be getting pretty widespread deployment. As such I'm spending a bit of fair bit of development time on user research and usability testing.

Users involved in the research are rather spread out geographically speaking so I'm looking at the best ways to get prototype interfaces to them. Additionally I can't afford to put any systems out of action while we're developing this the interface testing (at least at this stage) will be done on emulated systems.

I'm aware AMX has their panel preview app for this type of thing however the interface is quite heavily based on the panels live video input and interaction with it. Is anyone aware of a way of utilizing a video stream within panel preview? Alternatively I'm looking at creating a mock up interface in flash to distribute. Has anyone else been in a similar situation? What approach did you end up taking?

Cheers.

jweather

I've done "workflow"-style prototyping in PowerPoint, either using screenshots from TP4 with hyperlink buttons on them, sometimes just using PowerPoint drawing tools to get a rough sketch. I don't know your specific application, but can you fake the live video with still images? IE, click this button and the video changes to a new frame.