Are prototypes a great way to transfer knowledge and get early buy-in from stakeholders?

It depends. Mostly depends on the why you want to prototype.

  • Are you documenting a new ecosystem (let’s say a complex solution with many workflows)?
  • Are you going to create prototypes to cover some, not all, of the functional flows of the experience?
  • Is your team aligned with user centered design activities (you know… research… user testing…)?
  • The fail fast fail often hipe (it doesn’t mean you want to fetishist failure).

A relevant reality check for adopting prototyping in a particular product happens when your documents:

  • Fail to effectively communicate your design. the how it works intent;
  • Are not flexible enough to evolve with incremental changes;
  • Are unable to simulate the emotion, vital to the experience, or even keep up with the “current” design thinking.

I tend to use prototypes mostly paper… cheap and fast:

  • As the cornerstone of design documents;
  • To let them do the talking;
  • Hopefully you’ll have to write less documentation.

Don’t leave traditional design docs out entirely…

If you need to have a deeper understanding of the design solution, they provide context, and in this form, they’re much more likely to be read.

Over time i produced a long list unread design docs still to be read… and that means never.