01 Intro

App Prototyping Studio

Mick McQuaid

mcq@utexas.edu

University of Texas at Austin

19 Aug 2026

Week ONE

How to Start?

Read the syllabus?

(eventually we’ll hafta, but it’s a boring way to start)

Go around the room saying our names?

(eventually we’ll hafta, but better if we’re energized)

Get the juices flowing!

Why?

I think it’s better to start with an exercise that reminds us of what we do, no matter how proficient we are at it.

I need to know something about you and this is a very revealing exercise.

EDIPT

Empathize

Define

Ideate

Prototype

Test

‹watch video›

Now do what they did!

Materials

three pages (actually two pieces of paper, one is double-sided)

some index cards (about 6)

some colored sharpies (at least 2)

a pen or pencil

Form Pairs

form a pair or trio (but preferably a pair) with someone like you (that’s for today)

Protocol

Empathize (interview)

Define (list of needs)

Ideate (storyboard sheet)

Prototype (cards)

‹interview›

break into pairs so everyone gets a chance to be interviewer and interviewee

interview is about supporting new year’s resolutions (or something you think up)

if you’re a trio go 2-on-1 or 1-on-2 either way

‹make a list of needs›

analyze the interview

be sure to think about what they meant, not just what they said

think about how you could have gotten more from the interview

‹storyboard›

draw four panels of cartoons on the ideate page

show a successful interaction with an app

don’t worry about the app details

concentrate on the user experience—what did the user feel?

‹prototype›

now use the index cards

draw a few main app screens

focus on making it easy for the user

think about the circumstances of use

test

we’re skipping the test phase due to time constraints

but keep your cards so you can test later

it’s never too early to test

but testing is the focus of a different course

our focus: prototype

iterative cycle: design, prototype, evaluate

what did we learn?

give me your insights about each phase and write them in your sketchbook

phases were
- empathize (interview)
- define (list)
- ideate (storyboard)
- prototype (cards)

‹intros›

‹syllabus›

‹canvas›

I’ve put a daunting amount of reading on Canvas. I typically expect grad students to pace themselves on reading, so I’m not going to say too much about it except that most of it can be read piecemeal. The exception is Baker (2017), which is a novel about UX in a world with zombies. I think she wrote it that way to keep your interest up, but the fact is that it is a single continuous story that you should probably read through in a linear manner. That’s not the case for a lot of the other books that can, for example, be consulted when you’re working on a particular kind of milestone.

I should add that the librarian told me that I’m only allowed to put three chapters of any book on Canvas, so I did that with all the books. You can find some of them on the library website and you may want to buy some, although a few of them are absurdly expensive. I can not advocate that you go to annas-archive and download the books for free, partially because it may be illegal to do so. The courts ruled at one time that you had to deprive someone of ownership for an act to be considered theft. That hasn’t stopped the music and publishing industries from labeling downloading as theft, though, and they have enjoyed some handsome out of court settlements over file sharing. Another reason you may disapprove of annas-archive (as well as scihub) is that it is hosted in Russia, not the most popular country right now. Further, you may feel that the academic publishing industry is not a bunch of parasitic gangsters and instead feel that they fairly compensate authors for their work. You may not feel that universities should cut out the middleman and take over academic publishing. For all these reasons, I do not endorse annas-archive and only mention it for the sake of raising issues about publishing.

A few of the books are the topics of lectures, namely Patton (2014), Greever (2020), and Buxton (2007). You may want to prioritize these in your reading.

END

References

Baker, Rebecca. 2017. Agile UX Storytelling: Crafting Stories for Better Software Development. Apress. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-2997-2.

Buxton, Bill. 2007. Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design. Morgan Kaufman.

Greever, Tom. 2020. Articulating Design Decisions: Communicate with Stakeholders, Keep Your Sanity, and Deliver the Best User Experience. 2nd ed. O’Reilly Media.

Patton, Jeff. 2014. User Story Mapping. O’Reilly Media.

Pink, Daniel E. 2005. A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. Riverhead Books.

Colophon

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