What is parallel design and how does it relate to user interface design?

Parallel design is a useful method when undertaking a user interface design project, or any other creative process for that matter. The basic concept is to accumulate as many ideas as possible and then to take the best ones and synthesize them into better concepts of user interface designs. In many ways evolution is synonymous with the process as a natural selection of ideas occurs with the best ideas cannibalizing on others to emerge as the apex predators of the ideas ecosystem. Parallel design in effect thrives on the input of user interface designers as it requires a stream of ideas. The freedom and impetus to be as creative as possible can be a very liberating way of creating user interface designs.

How to create UI designs through the parallel design process

To further accentuate the generation of ideas a team of user interface designers is further split up into subgroups that brainstorm independently. Wireframing tools are great in this regard as they allow user interface designers to quickly sketch UI designs. Online wireframe tools that create clickable wireframes even further add to the convenience of creating wireframes. The user interface design groups are encouraged not to discuss their UI designs or show any wireframes  thereof until a workshop is held. At this point the UI design teams showcase their wireframes and use the best ideas to create a better user interface design. This process is repeated in cycles (it is recommended to go through at least four of these cycles) until the general user interface design is achieved. As the English say ‘the proof of the pudding is in the eating’ and the pudding of parallel design is repetition and collaboration. In the 2nd part of this blog I shall look at the benefits and drawbacks of parallel design when creating user interface designs.

For the people who are into screen design, Rapid Paper Prototyping is old school! But ever considered doing screen design on screen?

With pidoco’s web-based prototyping software, information architects and web developers can save valuable time, easily integrate other stakeholders and build better usability for the web.

Rapid Paper Prototyping has already been in the know for a while to get a web-application started. The idea is to sketch the basic concept on paper to be discussed within the team. This prototype will then be put through a refinement process by incorporating feedback from different stake holders. This paper prototype will eventually act as a rough guide for the whole project – from beginning to the end (but is there a real end?). Some screen-designers even use these very limited paper prototypes for performing usability tests. Revealing usability issues in the prototyping phase can save a lot of time and budget, since later alterations in the so called ‘finished’ website are minimized.

However, there are several drawbacks to Rapid Paper Prototyping.  Prototypes are difficult to add to the project repository and also difficult to different departments. Scanning paper prototypes and making them ‘clickable’ for web testing is also a time consuming task as we all know!

That is why many companies create their prototypes directly in MS PowerPoint or other diagramming tools and have them distributed to the relevant sources. True, that way one can share the data more effectively but it is not really more dynamic than copying a piece of paper handing it to the team. The prototypes still do not show the real capabilities for test user excitement:  links, dynamic menus and work-flows etc. cannot be reproduced effectively and need to be explained individually in long text. Again, more time and effort has to be invested to get the message across.

pidoco° has spotted this problem and made it their task to tackle it by providing a effective web-based interface design software.