What should I put in my eLearning prototype?

A prototype is a concrete model of a rough idea. Most design fields use prototypes to demonstrate how software, apps, and websites will function or look. These days, it is common to build eLearning prototypes for instructional design, too.

The question is, What type of prototype do you need? Here are some common prototypes:

• Functional Prototype: Demonstrates how eLearning will function.
• Look and Feel Prototype: Demonstrates the visual and aesthetic aspect of the eLearning.
• Usability Prototype: Demonstrates the ease of navigation and the entire experience.
• Feasibility Prototype: Helps you think through a design idea or tests the viability of an idea.

In his book, Leaving ADDIE for SAM, Michael Allen notes that senior leaders in an organization dictate training needs and approaches for their employees. This often results in a learning intervention that is either irrelevant or focuses on the wrong problem. By prototyping and showing it to learners, you are likely to elevate the quality of instruction when you incorporate their input and feedback. Also, sharing your prototypes to stakeholders and clients assures you get their feedback early in the process so there are no surprises later on.

Benefits of Creating an eLearning Prototype

The advantages of prototyping far outweigh the disadvantages. So, let’s start with the benefits. eLearning prototypes can:

• Serve as a cognitive aid to help you implement your varied ideas
• Help you explore an idea in the real world
• Help you find problems early in the design process
• Support an iterative design process
• Enable you to avoid the error of spending time and money on an idea that won’t work (the fail fast concept)
• Communicate how something will work to others who have no idea what you are talking about
• Help users, learners, sponsors, and stakeholders get involved in the design process
• Educate sponsors and stakeholders on the rationale for your design decisions and the effort it takes to develop an effective product

Disadvantages of Prototyping

It’s challenging to identify disadvantages to prototyping. I am grudgingly listing a few here.

• Prototyping takes time at the front end of a project. (But prototyping should save time in the long run).
• Supervisors may not understand why you would take the time to prototype, so this could be a disadvantage.
• Fail fast is an axiom of the prototyping approach. But some work cultures aren’t comfortable with the idea of failing. (Hint: Don’t use that phrase.)

Four Types of eLearning Prototypes

To decide what to prototype, consider what you need to think through, communicate to others, or test and evaluate. Let that guide your decision. Here are descriptions of four common prototypes, along with what to include in each one. You can combine different kinds of prototypes if that suits your purpose.

1. Functional or Interactive Prototype: What to Include

The purpose of this prototype is to demonstrate whether interactivity and functionality work as intended in an eLearning product. Consider the core interactive activities that users will complete. Prototype a lesson that demonstrates the functionality below.

• Buttons and navigation work correctly.
• Branching logic directs learners to correct paths.
• Interactions work correctly.
• Appropriate feedback to learner responses.
• Quizzes record and report results properly.
• Media (audio, video, animations) play as expected.

2. Look and Feel (Visual) eLearning Prototype: What to Include

The purpose of a visual prototype is to show the visual design direction of an eLearning course before full development. It showcases colors, typography, imagery style, layout, and interface elements without requiring fully working interactions or content.

Include the following items:

• Title, lesson, and content screen designs
• Layout and styling of navigation elements and menus
• Color palette
• Typeface(s) in several sizes
• Style of photos, icons, and illustrations
• Sample interaction elements like the hover state on buttons
• Other interactive controls

3. What to Include in a Usability Prototype

A usability prototype gathers user feedback on navigation, clarity of instructions, design, and flow before or during development. During usability testing, look for user challenges and points of friction. A usability prototype allows you to:

• Test whether learners can easily navigate and understand the course easily.
• Checks the ease of use on different devices.
• Focus on the flow, clarity, cognitive load, and user satisfaction.

Usability prototypes may be low-fidelity wireframes. Tools like Figma and Balsamiq work well for this.

4. What to Include in a Feasibility Prototype

Feasibility prototypes test whether a specific technical or instructional approach is possible to implement with your tools, timeframe, and constraints before committing to complete development. There are many reasons to create a feasibility prototype, such as:

• There are several viable solutions.
• A design may not work technically.
• An idea may take too long to implement.

You can create a prototype of each idea as a proof of concept to see if it is practical and worth implementing, such as:

• The unique features of your idea
• A small version of the most challenging part
• A short version of the part you thought might take too long to develop

Consider a Responsive Version

If you are designing a product to be used on desktop and mobile devices, you’ll need to test that it looks good and functions well on multiple devices. It’s best to prototype this early in the design process to ensure the product will look and function as intended on computers, tablets, and phones.

How to Prototype: Low-Fidelity or High-Fidelity?

Your prototypes can range from low-fidelity (rough, simplified representations) to high-fidelity (detailed, realistic representations). Use low-fidelity prototypes to test ideas and gather feedback quickly. Use high-fidelity prototypes to focus on user experience, visual design, and interactivity.

• Paper and Pencil. This is the ultimate low-fidelity prototype. Sketching is a surprisingly helpful way to start. For example, you can sketch the user interface, interactive activity, or logical flow of a product for quick feedback from stakeholders and users. Move to a digital format as you refine your design.
• Wireframe Tools. Wireframe Tools. Wireframes are low-fidelity graphics that show the skeleton of a user interface or web page without getting into too much detail. Many wireframe tools can produce interactive prototypes. Popular prototype tools with this functionality are Figma and Balsamiq.
• PowerPoint. I consider PowerPoint to be a medium-fidelity prototyping tool. It has graphic capabilities and can hyperlink to other slides, so you can quickly simulate interactivity. Also, PowerPoint defaults to a horizontal slide orientation. Customize the slide size if you want a vertical orientation.
• Authoring/eLearning Production Tools. Build high-fidelity prototypes using an authoring tool. One advantage of starting with an authoring tool is that you won’t need to duplicate the work when you decide on your final design. The disadvantage is that you can focus on design details too early in the process.

Conclusion

Although this article focuses on eLearning prototypes, you can prototype nearly any type of learning or performance support product or even a live event.

• A prototype of a half-day workshop would involve facilitating a 15 or 30-minute training session.
• A prototype for a course based on content curation would involve curating content for a small group of people.
• A prototype for a multi-page job aid is a one-page cheat sheet.
• A prototype for a video-based lesson is a short version of the video or one with lower production quality than the final.

What do you include in your prototypes? Answer in the Comments section below.